27 January 2015 Source: HRO.org ( info) Environmentalist and civil society activist Evgeny Vitishko was sentenced to three years in a penal colony on trumped up charges. His ‘crime’ was to openly talk about the illegal construction on the site of a nature reserve and damage to the environment caused by building in Sochi. Evgeny Vitishko is one of the leading activists of the North Caucasus Environmental Watch. He was first given a suspended sentence after he had publicized the illegal construction of a vacation home in a forested nature reserve. Allegedly, he spoiled the fence by writing on it. The suspended sentence was changed for a term in prison not long before the start of the Olympics when he publicly stated that a report on the environmental damage caused by the Olympic construction works was being prepared for publication. Amnesty International has recognized Evgeny Vitishko as a prisoner of conscience. We can speed up the release of Vitishko by collecting 100,000 signatures and passing them to the Prosecutor General. Now, when environmentalists from all over the world have spoken out in support of Vitishko, the time has come for the unlawful decisions of lower courts in Krasnodar region to be quashed by courts of appeal. | 
