#Alexandra Skochilenko

[coochiequeens]

Russia gave her a harsher sentence for placing stickers in a grocery store then they do men who kill women.

17 Nov 2023

Russian artist Alexandra Skochilenko has been sentenced to jail for seven years after being found guilty of spreading “false information” about the Russian military by replacing a handful of supermarket price tags with messages criticising the war in Ukraine.

The 33-year-old, known as Sasha, is one of thousands of Russians to be detained, fined or jailed for speaking out against Moscow’s invasion of its neighbour amid an escalating crackdown on free speech and opposition to President Vladimir Putin.

Skochilenko was arrested in her native St Petersburg in April 2022, after an elderly customer at the supermarket found the slogans on the price tags and notified the police.

“The Russian army bombed an arts school in Mariupol. Some 400 people were hiding in it from the shelling,” one read, in reference to Russia’s brutal siege of the southern Ukrainian city. Another said, “Russian conscripts are being sent to Ukraine. Lives of our children are the price of this war.”

Judge Oksana Demiasheva delivered the verdict on Thursday hours after Skochilenko, who has a congenital heart defect and coeliac disease, had made a final statement to the court, asking for compassion and to be set free.

As well as the prison term, the artist was banned from using the internet for three years.

Skochilenko, wearing a colourful T-shirt decorated with a large red heart, reacted with shock to the sentence, covering her face and wiping away tears.

Supporters shouted “shame” and “we’re with you Sasha”, the AFP news agency reported.

Skochilenko’s lawyers left without giving any comment.

Skochilenko’s arrest came about a month after authorities adopted a law effectively criminalising any public expression about the war that deviated from the Kremlin’s official line.

Human rights group Memorial – now banned in Russia – said police spent 10 days interrogating supermarket staff and inspecting security camera footage before arresting the artist.

“They sometimes give less for murder than for five price tags in a supermarket,” Boris Vishnevsky, a politician linked to the opposition Yabloko party, told AFP.

“Hopefully, someday, the pendulum will turn the other way.”

Skochilenko was accused of committing what the state prosecutor described as a serious crime out of “political hatred” towards Russia. He had asked for her to be jailed for eight years.

Skochilenko admitted to swapping the tags but denied that the text written on them was false. She said she was a pacifist who valued human life above all else.

“How weak is our prosecutor’s faith in our state and society if he thinks our statehood and public safety can be ruined by five little pieces of paper?” she said in court.

“Everyone sees and knows that you are not judging a terrorist. You’re not trying an extremist. You’re not even trying a political activist. You’re judging a pacifist,” she said.

Skochilenko’s friends and supporters said the verdict was a disgrace [Olga Maltseva/AFP]

Amnesty International condemned the verdict.

“Her persecution has become synonymous with the absurdly cruel oppression faced by Russians openly opposing their country’s criminal war,” it said in a statement.

Memorial has designated Skochilenko a political prisoner and has launched a campaign calling for her release.

She has already been in detention for nearly 19 months, meaning that her overall term will be reduced by more than two years, since every day served in a pre-trial detention centre counts as 1.5 days of time served in a regular penal colony.

But she has struggled in custody due to pre-existing health conditions, and her need for a gluten-free diet, according to her lawyers and her partner.

According to OVD-Info, a prominent rights group that monitors political arrests and provides legal aid, a total of 19,834 Russians have been arrested between February 24 2022, when Russia began its invasion, and late October 2023 for speaking out or demonstrating against the war.

Also on Thursday, opposition politician Vladimir Milov was convicted in absentia of spreading false information about the army and sentenced to eight years. Milov, who was once Russia’s deputy energy minister and is now an ally of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny, has left the country.

[russianreader]

The Sasha Skochilenko Trial: 7 July 2023

Petersburg anti-war activist and political prisoner Sasha Skochilenko at her trial, 7 July 2023. Photo: Alexandra Astakhova At today’s hearing, the issue of remand was considered. The court could have released Sasha [Skochilenko] to house arrest or restricted her from doing certain things, or left her in pretrial detention for another three months. This hearing might not have happened if the…

[higherentity]

[diegomaranan]

Russian artist who replaced grocery price labels with anti-war messages has been sentenced to 7 years in jail.

[freedomaboveall]

Russian court sentenced LGBT & Pro-Ukraine activist Alexandra Skochilenko to 7-years of prison.

[mariacallous]

Over 200 Russian doctors signed an open letter Nov. 18 demanding imprisoned Russian anti-war artist Alexandra Skochilenko be released due to her declining health.

"Apart from our outrage over the obvious injustice of the verdict, we, as a medical community, are deeply concerned about Sasha's health," the letter said.

Skochilenko was sentenced to seven years in prison on Nov. 16 for "public dissemination of deliberately false information" about the Russian army. She replaced five price tags at a St. Petersburg grocery store with anti-war messages shortly after Russia's full-scale invasion.

In total, 247 medical professionals directed their letter to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, calling for the artist's immediate release. Skochilenko, 33, suffers from a heart condition and celiac disease, requiring specialized medical attention and dietary care.

While the letter defended Skochilenko's right to her "pacifist" views, the doctors did not address Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

Skochilenko was convicted one month following the enactment of a Russian law that essentially criminalizes public anti-war expressions. The legislation has been used extensively amid a crackdown on dissenting figures, with numerous individuals facing prolonged prison sentences.

According to the organization OVD-Info, between the Feb. 24 invasion and October 2023, Russian authorities have detained 19,834 people at anti-war protests. Over 700 criminal cases have been brought against demonstrators.

[ravenkings]

[...]

The Kremlin has never been especially fond of feminist ideas. More than a decade ago, members of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years in prison for performing an anti-Putin song in a Moscow church. But pressure against feminist thought and activity has been ratcheting up. A domestic abuse law introduced in the State Duma in 2019 went nowhere. The next year, authorities designated the prominent Russian nonprofit Nasiliu.net, which supports domestic violence victims, as a foreign agent, a label regularly applied to critics of Mr. Putin’s politics. (Nasiliu.net’s founder, Anna Rivina, was personally deemed a foreign agent.) In 2021, they shut down a major national feminist festival, Moscow FemFest. “They didn’t refer to any laws but simply said, ‘We need to clear the space,’” the festival’s founder, Lola Tagaeva, told me.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the Feminist Antiwar Resistance quickly formed and became one of the loudest protest movements in the country. More than 100 of its activists have faced various forms of persecution, the organization says. In one of the most high-profile cases, the artist Alexandra Skochilenko was recently sentenced to seven years in prison for swapping price tags in a St. Petersburg supermarket with statements highlighting civilian deaths in the conflict. Other political and social women’s initiatives have gained momentum since then, including mothers worrying about their sons being sent to war.

This summer, Russia’s health minister, Mikhail Murashko, criticized women putting their education and careers ahead of having children as “improper” and announced a national initiative to control the circulation of abortion-inducing drugs in pharmacies. At least two Russian regions have already outlawed “coercing” women into abortion, and in two other places, annexed Crimea and Kursk, private clinics have nearly stopped providing abortions altogether. Women nationwide have been panic-buying emergency contraception pills amid fears of a national ban.

Until now, the Russian state has typically opposed women’s groups by blocking their efforts to change laws or by issuing “black marks,” such as the foreign agent designation, designed to complicate lives bureaucratically. But a month before Ms. Berkovich and Ms. Petriychuk were arrested, a Russian lawmaker, Oleg Matveychev, claimed he had drafted a bill recognizing feminism as “an extremist ideology.” The bill has not advanced in the Duma.

[...]

Konstantin Dobrynin, a Russian lawyer based in Britain, said that under that law, it is possible that an official charge of radical feminism might stick, given “the darkest times we live in today.” If that happens, he said, it could very likely lead to the criminalization of feminism as an ideology in Russia. It would be, he said, “a witch hunt and the Holy Inquisition in the most literal form.”

[cyberbenb]

Russian doctors demand release of imprisoned anti-war artist

Over 200 Russian doctors signed an open letter Nov. 18 demanding imprisoned Russian anti-war artist Alexandra Skochilenko be released due to her declining health. “Apart from our outrage over the obvi Source : kyivindependent.com/over-100-…

[newstfionline]

Saturday, November 18, 2023

Can’t Think, Can’t Remember: More Americans Say They’re in a Cognitive Fog (NYT) There are more Americans who say they have serious cognitive problems—with remembering, concentrating or making decisions—than at any time in the last 15 years, data from the Census Bureau shows. The increase started with the pandemic: The number of working-age adults reporting “serious difficulty” thinking has climbed by an estimated one million people. About as many adults ages 18 to 64 now report severe cognitive issues as report trouble walking or taking the stairs, for the first time since the bureau started asking the questions each month in the 2000s. The sharp increase captures the effects of long Covid for a small but significant portion of younger adults, researchers say, most likely in addition to other effects of the pandemic, including psychological distress. Emmanuel Aguirre, a 30-year-old software engineer in the Bay Area, had Covid at the end of 2020. Within a month, he said, his life was transformed: ‘I felt like I was permanently hung over, drunk, high and in a brain freeze all at once.’ He stopped dating, playing video games and reading novels, though he managed to keep his job, working remotely. Some of his physical symptoms eventually abated, but the brain fog has lingered, disappearing at times only to steamroll him days later.

Finland to close 4 border crossing points after accusing Russia of organizing flow of migrants (AP) Finland will close four crossing points on its long border with Russia to stop the flow of Middle Eastern and African migrants that it accuses Moscow of ushering to the border in recent months, the government said Thursday. Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo and Interior Minister Mari Rantanen said the southeastern crossing points—Imatra, Niirala, Nuijamaa and Vaalimaa—will be closed at midnight Friday on the Finland-Russia land border that serves as the European Union’s external border. It runs a total of 1,340 kilometers (832 miles), mostly in thick forests in the south, all the way to the rugged landscape in the Arctic north. Dozens of migrants, mostly from the Middle East and Africa, have arrived in recent days at the Nordic nation without proper documentation and have sought asylum after allegedly being helped by Russian authorities to travel to the heavily controlled border zone.

Russian musician sentenced to seven years for trivial antiwar protest (Washington post) Alexandra Skochilenko, a pacifist Russian artist and musician with no prior history of political activism, was sentenced to seven years in prison by a St. Petersburg court, for a trivial antiwar protest: covering five supermarket price tags in March of last year with stickers giving information about Russia’s war against Ukraine. Skochilenko, wearing one of her trademark bright hippie shirts with a red heart emblazoned on the front, fixed her eyes on Judge Oksana Demyasheva and told her: “Everyone sees and knows that you are not judging a terrorist. You are not judging an extremist. You are not even judging a political activist. You are judging a pacifist.”

Troubled times for Syrians in Turkey (BBC) Turkey hosts the largest population of refugees and asylum seekers in the world. These include around 3.6 million Syrians, who fled there during the war in their country. Now many of those Syrian refugees feel forgotten and unsafe once more, while tensions with locals are higher than ever. Seven years ago, the EU handed Turkey six billion euros in a deal to stop Syrians heading to Europe. Since then, many Turks say their welcome has worn thin. And now, the Turkish government is deporting Syrians it says are in Turkey illegally, back to the warzone. Karam was 19 when the President of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, had security forces fire on peaceful protesters and arrest hundreds of citizens. Karam was one of those arrested, and after being released he eventually paid a people smuggler to take him to Turkey. He believes that he will be arrested and tortured if he returns to Syria. But he is also afraid to stay in Turkey, saying that local Police ask for his papers around five times a day. What is next for Syrians living there?

In China, state media does U-turn on US (Washington Post) Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s meeting with President Biden this week was an unmitigated success, according to the Chinese version of events, as state media made an about-face so abrupt it caused whiplash on social media. After months of criticizing the United States for trying to contain China’s growth, state-controlled Chinese websites were filled Thursday with reports on the “positive, comprehensive and constructive” talks between the leaders of the world’s two largest economies. This left more than a few Chinese social media users confused, report our colleagues Meaghan Tobin and Lyric Li. “I haven’t been online for two days … a look at the trending topics shows the atmosphere between China and the U.S. is as if a couple in an arranged marriage fell in love,” read one post on the Chinese microblogging platform Weibo.

How China strong-armed its way into dominating the South China Sea. (NYT) Beijing says many of these boats are just fishing boats. But they bristle with machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and high-velocity water cannons. They’re here for intimidation. This fleet, built largely with government money, helps China dominate one of the most crucial and disputed waterways in the world: the South China Sea. Working in tandem with an aggressive coast guard, these militarized fishing boats assert Beijing’s presence more than 1,000 miles from the Chinese mainland. The boats patrol the tiny, disputed Spratly islets. Their reinforced steel hulls make it easy to ram smaller boats. They swarm other countries’ outposts and squat on shoals within sight of foreign coastlines. These fishing boats, most of which don’t actually fish, make up a maritime militia that is upending the rules of the sea. By providing backup to the China Coast Guard and maintaining a constant presence in remote waters—often parking on contested reefs for weeks at a time—they amplify China’s ambitions in the South China Sea. Beijing has used similar methods across its vast frontier, from the mountainous borders with South Asia to rocks in the East China Sea. And once China incrementally takes over, a new reality reigns.

‘Israeli public in a bubble,’ journalists says (CJR) Writing for Jewish Currents, Jonathan Shamir traces how Israeli officials have sought to discredit the reporting of journalists in Gaza—and to justify violence against them—by casting them as accomplices of Hamas. As a result, “the Israeli public is in a bubble,” Oren Persico, an Israeli journalist, said. “It doesn’t understand why the world is angry.”

Aid to Gaza halted with communications down for a second day, as food and water supplies dwindle (AP) Communications systems in the Gaza Strip were down for a second day Friday with no fuel to power the internet and phone networks, causing aid agencies to halt cross-border deliveries of humanitarian supplies even as they warned people may soon face starvation. Gaza is now receiving only 10% of its needed food supplies daily, and dehydration and malnutrition are growing with nearly all of the 2.3 million people in the territory needing food, said Abeer Etefa, a Mideast regional spokeswoman for the United Nations’ World Food Program. “People are facing the immediate possibility of starvation,” she said from Cairo. With few trucks entering Gaza and no fuel to distribute the food “there is no way to meet the current hunger needs,” she said Thursday. “The existing food systems in Gaza are basically collapsing.” With hospitals under siege and humanitarian supplies paused, U.N. human rights chief Volker Turk warned of “massive outbreaks of infectious disease and hunger,” adding that if fuel supplies run out entirely, Gaza would likely see the collapse of its sewage system and health care.

Thousands of bodies lie buried in rubble in Gaza. Families dig to retrieve them, often by hand (AP) The wreckage goes on for block after devastated block. The smell is sickening. Every day, hundreds of people claw through tons of rubble with shovels and iron bars and their bare hands. They are looking for the bodies of their children. Their parents. Their neighbors. All of them killed in Israeli missile strikes. The corpses are there, somewhere in the endless acres of destruction. More than five weeks into Israel’s war against Hamas, some streets are now more like graveyards. Officials in Gaza say they don’t have the equipment, manpower or fuel to search properly for the living, let alone the dead. More than 11,400 Palestinians have been killed, two-thirds of them women and minors, according to Palestinian health authorities. The U.N. humanitarian affairs office estimates that about 2,700 people, including 1,500 children, are missing and believed buried in the ruins.

Gaza’s economy obliterated (Washington Post) The solar energy company Sunbox paid its 15 full-time employees in Gaza this month. But next month is uncertain: The company’s main offices in Gaza City were destroyed in an Israeli strike. With its office obliterated, its revenue cut and its employees sheltering from Israeli bombardments, the company, like most in the Gaza Strip, has bleak prospects in the months ahead. Gaza’s economy already was crumbling. The war has pounded it to dust. Last year, 80 percent of the population relied on international aid, according to a United Nations estimate. Most of whatever economic activity persisted has ground to a halt amid Israel’s response to the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7. Bombardments and a ground invasion have left more than 11,400 Palestinians dead, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Some 1.5 million people—much of the population of Gaza—have been displaced, according to the United Nations. “Gaza’s economy ceased to function as of the last quarter of 2023, and will continue to be so indefinitely,” read a statement this month from the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute.

Bodies unearthed and bridges swept away (BBC) At least 32 people have been killed across Somalia after devastating floods which followed years of drought. The UN warns that more than 1.6 million people could be affected. Correspondent Sahnun Ahmed reported: Following Somalia’s worst floods in a century, gushing waters have swept through a cemetery in the central city of Galkayo, leaving bodies floating through the streets. The gruesome sight has haunted residents like Ayaan Mohamed, who lives near the graveyard. Somalia’s fragile, UN-backed government has been trying to provide emergency relief, but it says it cannot cover all the affected areas.

Madagascar Votes Amid Violence and Calls for Boycott (NYT) After weeks of political violence, voters on the island nation of Madagascar went to the polls on Thursday to elect a president, even though 10 of the 13 candidates called for a boycott, accusing the man they are vying to replace of unfairly tilting the process in his favor. Most of the 30 million residents of this nation off the southeastern coast of Africa live in poverty. A series of weather-related catastrophes in recent years have damaged the country’s agricultural production, its economic mainstay, increasing the humanitarian crisis. Madagascar is heavily reliant on foreign aid, and there are fears that a disputed election could cause some benefactors to pull back support, which “will lead the country to a chaotic situation,” said Andoniaina Ratsimamanga, a spokeswoman for the Red Cross, which is helping with the humanitarian response in Madagascar.

[don-lichterman]

When Performance Art Is an Anti-War Instrument

When Performance Art Is an Anti-War Instrument

Alexandra Skochilenko is a thirty-year-old artist from St. Petersburg—the city where I lived before Russia attacked Ukraine. She made music and films, drew comics about depression, and worked as a photojournalist. On 11 April 2022, Skochilenko was arrested and placed in a pre-trial detention center, where she is currently still being held. A criminal case was filed against her, with a maximum…

[cujus]

Alexandra Skochilenko

[russianreader]

The Case of Sasha Skochilenko

The Case of Sasha Skochilenko

The case of Sasha Skochilenko is a striking example of the absurdity of today’s Russia. She faces ten years in prison for her anti-war protest at a supermarket. Bumaga has discovered that Sasha’s protest was reported to the police by an elderly woman. The security services organized a special operation to capture Skochilenko. Today the young woman is in a pretrial detention center. She will…

[opticandmasturbation]

Sanctions as a Colonial Practice -- "But all this time Russian men and women have been protesting against every inhuman initiative – from the “gay propaganda law” to the “Dima Iakovlev law” cutting ties with Americans; they have been protesting against Russia’s aggression in Georgia and in the Crimea; they have been taking to the streets to support protests in Belarus and Kazakhstan; they have been holding antifascist protests in memory of assassinated antifascist activists Markelov and Baburova (also Russians, by the way); Russian men and women have been creating various NGOs and support groups, have been disseminating information on HIV, have been monitoring elections and have been informing the public of the offences committed, have been working in the media despite the censorship, murders of journalists and civil rights activists, despite political persecution, despite the information about tortures in prisons and police stations, despite having children and elderly parents to look after.

Right now Alexandra Skochilenko, the artist from Saint-Petersburg, is under arrest for switching the price tags in the food store: she’d put there the cards with the information about the Russian army’s actions in Mariupol. I would state that again – right now she is under a threat of 10 years in prison for this instance of political statement/activism. Moreover, she has bipolar and genetic gluten intolerance, and being under arrest is killing her.

Russian long-haul truck drivers have been on strike; the mothers of Beslan have not been silent. It is the ‘ordinary’ Russians who put out Siberian forest fires and who rushed from all parts of the country to volunteer in Krymsk after the flooding, while the governor of the region could not be bothered with it. There were cases when protests and other activities made a difference: oppositional journalist Ivan Golunov, who was charged with possession so that he would stop inconveniencing the authorities, was released; the joint effort of feminist lawyers resulted in Dmitry Grachev, who had cut off his ex-wife Margarita’s hands with an axe, getting 14 years in jail" https://www.getrevue.co/profile/belkitz/issues/weekly-newsletter-of-issue-2-1090373