 Source: HRO.org (info) The management of Tambov Penal Colony No 2 has held back letters written by its inmate Evgeny Vitishko, a member of the board of Ecological Watch for Northern Caucasus, who has been named a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International having been sentenced to three years behind bars on grounds of ‘damage’ to the fence of the Krasnodar Governor’s ‘dacha.’ Evgeny Vitishko’s supporters reported these developments on social media on 19 January 2015, according to Kasparov.ru. On 20 January the activists posted the following: "We learned from the public prosecutor today that letters sent a month ago by Vitishko to the court and the public prosecutor are still being held at the penal colony. The political officer is withholding them for some reason, and only allowing them to be sent in the presence of the public prosecutor. Is this some new approach to handling prisoners’ official letters? We have not yet been able to find out what has happened to Vitishko’s applications to the Supreme Court and Tuapse town court.” Evgeny Vitishko, considered a political prisoner by Russian human rights activists, is serving a term in the penal colony after having sprayed slogans such as “This is our forest” on the fence surrounding the holiday complex built in a nature reserve, together with another activist, Suren Gazaryan. Environmental activists claim that the governor of the Krasnodar region has built his dacha on the complex. Translated by Joanne Reynolds |
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