2024-07-09 06:36:42
On Monday, a Russian military court sent local director Yevgenia Berkovičová and playwright Svetlana Petričuková to six years in prison. Both were condemned because of a play, previously awarded a prestigious award. She eventually sentenced them for allegedly endorsing terrorism.
The game is called Finist, bright falcon. It talks about women who decided to marry Islamic fighters and follow them to Syria. The AP describes Monday’s verdict as the latest act of Russian power’s crackdown on dissent, which has escalated since the start of a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. According to Reuters, it was even the most visible condemnation of Russian cultural figures since the beginning of the war.
Both women, 39-year-old Jevgenija Berkovičová and 44-year-old Svetlana Petrijčuková, were arrested last May. They spent more than a year in pre-trial detention. According to the Interfax agency, judge Yuri Massin has now sent them to a penal colony with a regular regime, which represents the second level on a four-level scale of the severity of the prison regime.
The defense has announced that it will appeal against the verdict, as both women “are completely innocent”, as Berković’s lawyer Xenija Korpinská said. “We will challenge the court’s decision, although there is little hope of success,” she said, according to the British BBC.
Berkovičová has a reputation as a recognized independent director, Petrijčuková as an award-winning author. Both have repeatedly denied accusations of allegedly endorsing terrorism. Berkovičová said in court that she staged the play to prevent terrorism. Petrijčuková explained that she wrote the text to avoid the events described in it.
The defense argued that the play was supported by the country’s Ministry of Culture and that the previous year it had won the Golden Mask award, which is Russia’s most prestigious theater award. In 2019, the production was staged in a women’s prison in Siberia and was praised by the State Prison Service on its website.
He knows the convicted female directors Berkovič after the announcement of the sentence. | Photo: Reuters
But then a report to the police came into play. The whistleblower’s name is not known to the public, he appeared before the court as a secret witness with an altered voice and the pseudonym Nikita. He claimed that he was outraged by how the game portrayed “female terrorists as victims and the Russian state and Russian society as the culprit” because they had forced women to join Islamists. According to him, the message of the play is that women in Russia have it bad because they live without love and are humiliated. That’s why they listen to the lure of terrorists.
When asked why he did not speak out against the play immediately after its reading, which he attended, but instead turned to the police, Nikita replied that they would have laughed at him in the theater, ridiculed him and made a fool of him.
The accusations of female artists caused outrage in Russia. An open letter in support of them, published by the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, was signed by more than 16,000 people. According to this newspaper, the game clearly condemns terrorism. Dozens of Russian actors, directors and journalists also endorsed affidavits urging the court to release the women. Neither helped.
Immediately after Russian troops invaded Ukraine, the Kremlin unleashed a large-scale repressive campaign unprecedented since Soviet times. Authorities prosecute any critics of the war as criminals. They persecute not only opposition politicians, affected by draconian punishments, but everyone who spoke out against the war publicly or otherwise, the AP agency reminds.
The pressure also increased on the artists. Actors and directors have been kicked out of theaters in recent years, and musicians have ended up on the “black list”, which excludes them from the possibility of performing concerts. Some were branded with the derogatory label “foreign agent”, bringing with it increased official oversight and strongly negative connotations.
Many artists preferred to emigrate from Russia. Berkovičová, who cares for two adopted daughters, refused to leave and continued to work in Moscow. Shortly after the start of the war against Ukraine, she organized an anti-war demonstration and was imprisoned for 11 days, writes the AP agency.
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Russian woman Alena Machoninová experienced the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 in Moscow. She described her feelings on the Spotlight show. | Video: The Spotlight Team