Sakharov Prize Won by Jailed Ukrainian Filmmaker & Activist

Sakharov human rights prize has been awarded to jailed Ukrainian filmmaker & activist Oleg Sentsov – a critic of Russia, by the European Parliament on Thursday 25 October 2018, unjustly jailed in Russia for opposing its annexation of Crimea and described as a “symbol of the struggle” to free political prisoners. Sentsov has been awarded the €50,000 prize for an “exceptional contribution” to human rights around the world. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko hailed the decision to give the award to Sentsov, and said on Facebook, “I am sure that this decision of the European Parliament will bring nearer the release of Oleg Sentsov”.

European Parliament President Antonio Tajani said, “Through his courage and determination, by putting his life in danger, the filmmaker Oleg Sentsov has become a symbol of the struggle for the release of political prisoners held in Russia and around the world”.

Sentsov was among three finalists for the prestigious prize, along with a group of 11 charities rescuing migrants in the Mediterranean, and Nasser Zefzafi, head of a Moroccan protest movement who has been in jail since May 2017.

Oleg Sentsov, 42, a vocal critic of the Kremlin, is serving a 20-year term over an alleged arson plot in Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. He is being held in a Russian penal colony above the Arctic Circle. He started a hunger strike on May 14 demanding the release of all Ukrainian prisoners in Russia, and his poor health provoked an outcry from the international community. He called off the protest after 145 days to avoid being force-fed, after extracting no concessions from authorities.

• Sentsov made his first film Gamer in 2011, writing, directing and producing it himself on a budget of just US$20,000 raised from his job running a gaming centre in the Crimean city of Simferopol.
• It was shown at several film festivals but reviews were generally average.
• Sentsov’s career as a film director was on the rise when Russia’s annexation of his native Crimea abruptly changed the course of his life.
• At the time of his arrest in 2014, he was preparing to make a new film – Nosorog (Rhino) with financing from a German film fund.
• He was also an opposition activist and member of the protest group AutoMaidan (an on-going socio-political movement that began in Kiev within the Euromaidan) that held protests against Ukraine’s Russia-backed president Viktor Yanukovych. He took part in the uprising in 2014 that overthrew Yanukovych.
• Sentsov was convicted in 2015 by a Russian military court of carrying out arson attacks on pro-Kremlin party offices in Crimea and plotting more attacks, including blowing up a Lenin statue in Simferopol.
• His trial prompted condemnation from Western countries and Kiev.
• Supporters say Russia wanted to make an example of him with a particularly harsh sentence.
• His mother begged Russian President Vladimir Putin in a letter sent this summer: “Do not destroy his life and that of his loved ones. We are waiting for him at home.”

Sakharov Human Rights Prize – commonly known as the Sakharov Prize, set up in 1988, is awarded every year by the European Parliament to individuals or organizations that “have made an important contribution to the fight for human rights or democracy”, and is named in honour of Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov: a Russian nuclear physicist, renowned as designer of the Soviet Union’s RDS-37, a code name for Soviet development of thermonuclear weapons. He later became an advocate of civil liberties and civil reforms in the Soviet Union, dissident and activist for disarmament, peace and human rights, for which he faced state persecution; these efforts earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975. Nelson Mandela was the inaugural winner of Sakharov Prize in 1988 together with Anatoly Marchenko (posthumously); and Pakistan’s Malala Yousafzai won it on 10 October 2013.