Skochilenko, carrying considered one of her trademark vibrant hippie shirts with a crimson coronary heart emblazoned on the entrance, mounted her eyes on Decide Oksana Demyasheva and instructed her: “Everybody sees and is aware of that you’re not judging a terrorist. You aren’t judging an extremist. You aren’t even judging a political activist. You’re judging a pacifist.”
The decide prohibited video protection of Skochilenko’s closing assertion earlier than saying a responsible verdict on the cost of spreading “pretend information” concerning the army.
Spectators shouted, “Disgrace!” after Demyasheva handed down the seven-year sentence, in line with Mediazona, an unbiased Russian media outlet.
The decision comes amid a raft of unusually harsh punishments being meted out for even the mildest dissent in opposition to Russia’s conflict in Ukraine. As Skochilenko was taken away by police, supporters chanted a diminutive of her identify: “Sasha! Sasha!”
In her closing deal with to the court docket, Skochilenko denounced the conflict, saying it had introduced nothing however sorrow, dying and ache, for no motive that she may comprehend, in line with unbiased Russian media retailers, a few of which revealed her full assertion.
“Why wage conflict after we are all that we’ve on this world, filled with calamities, catastrophes and hardships? Can all of the wealth and energy within the universe redeem your beloved from the clutches of dying?”
One police investigator, she claimed, resigned reasonably than proceed engaged on her case, a press release that might not be independently verified.
“He confided to my lawyer, ‘I didn’t come to work for the Investigative Committee to pursue instances like Sasha Skochilenko’s,’” she continued, saying that the investigator had adopted his conscience, simply as she did.
“My case is so weird and ludicrous that even staff at Pretrial Detention Heart Quantity 5 are astonished, exclaiming, ‘Do they actually put individuals in jail for this now?’” mentioned Skochilenko, 33, who has been incarcerated since spring of final 12 months.
Many of the Russians who’ve been sentenced to harsh jail phrases are outstanding opposition figures and fierce critics of President Vladimir Putin corresponding to Alexei Navalny, Vladimir Kara-Murza and their associates. However earlier than the conflict, Skochilenko was not a political activist and spent most of her time organizing jam classes and drawing quaint cartoons.
In feedback to The Washington Submit final 12 months conveyed by her lawyer, Skochilenko mentioned her time in jail had develop into a sort of involuntary antiwar protest, calling it her “largest work.”
“My detention and the cruelty to me has made my act public and given it such magnitude,” she mentioned. “I’m not an activist. I’m an artist, a performer.”
Upset by the Ukrainian deaths brought on by Russian’s invasion, she was impressed on a whim by an internet antiwar marketing campaign by activists throughout Russia to put the stickers with conflict statistics and different antiwar info on high of grocery store value tags.
One sticker learn, “The Russian military bombed an artwork college in Mariupol the place about 400 individuals have been hiding from shelling.” One other mentioned: “Weekly inflation reached a brand new excessive not seen since 1998 due to our army actions in Ukraine. Cease the conflict.”
Skochilenko was caught as a result of a pensioner, Galina Baranova, 76, noticed the stickers whereas buying and reported the incident to the police. The artist, who had a guitar protruding of her backpack and had been on her approach to go to a good friend, was straightforward to trace on CCTV cameras.
“The state prosecutor repeatedly declared my actions extraordinarily harmful to society and the state. How fragile should the prosecutor’s perception in our state and society be, if he thinks that our statehood and public security could be introduced down by 5 small items of paper,” Skochilenko declared on Thursday.
“Nobody was damage by my actions, but I’ve been incarcerated for over a 12 months and a half now, alongside murderers, thieves, statutory rapists and pimps. Can the supposed hurt I brought on even examine to those crimes?”
All through her ordeal, Skochilenko has confronted astonishing cruelty. Jail authorities denied her gluten-free meals that she wants as a sufferer of celiac illness. She was additionally denied remedy for a coronary heart situation at one level. She additionally has bipolar dysfunction and was identified with an ovarian cyst whereas in jail.
Authorities positioned her in a cell with bullies who pressured her to face all day, denied her entry to the bathroom for hours on finish and made positive she missed meals, her accomplice, Sonya Subbotina, instructed The Submit in an interview final 12 months. Additionally they tormented her by forcing her to comb the cell repeatedly and to clean her clothes again and again.
Skochilenko made some extent of attempting to attraction to the decide’s conscience on Thursday, warning that Demyasheva can be remembered for her verdict. However Demysheva’s sentence was only a 12 months in need of the eight years demanded by prosecutor Alexander Gladyshev.
Days earlier, Demyasheva suspended the listening to as a result of spectators loudly applauded the impassioned protection provided by Skochilenko’s lawyer, Yana Nepovinnova.
“You will need to not punish dissent. You will need to not punish for goal criticism of the federal government and its selections,” Nepovinnova mentioned, calling the trial an examination that the decide may cross or fail.
Skochilenko mentioned Thursday that as a pacificist she couldn’t bear to kill even a spider, and was “frightened on the very considered taking a life.”
“Sure, I believe that life is sacred. Oh sure, life! Strip away the world’s frippery like cash, energy, glory and social standing, and all that’s left is life. Oh sure, life! It’s persistent, tenacious, transferring, unimaginable, highly effective.”
She mentioned that she doubted that the prosecutor, deep in his coronary heart, actually wished to see her jailed for such a very long time, speculating that he was most likely considering solely of his profession.
“Regardless of being behind bars, I’m freer than you,” she mentioned, explaining that a minimum of she was not afraid to state her opinions.
“I’m not fearful of not making an excellent profession, showing ridiculous, susceptible, or unusual. I’m not afraid of being totally different from others,” she mentioned. “Maybe that’s why my state is so afraid of me and others like me and retains me caged like a harmful animal.”