Police in St. Petersburg disrupt letter-writing event for political prisoners
Police officers and masked people wearing no identifying insignia entered Nora, a venue in St. Petersburg’s Kolomna neighborhood. They disrupted a letter-writing event for political prisoners planned by the Lyudi i Pisma (People and Letters) project, the news outlet Ostorozhno, Peterburg reported.
Further details and the reasons for the law enforcement raid are unknown.
The event was to be the activists’ first letter-writing event in St. Petersburg. They had previously held similar events in Moscow.
On October 30, the Day of Remembrance for Victims of Political Repression, the St. Petersburg branch of the Yabloko party held a letter-writing event in support of political prisoners. The event took place without incident.
The human rights organization Memorial lists 1,368 political prisoners. The list does not include people persecuted on religious grounds. Memorial also maintains a database of people whose detention appears to be politically motivated and unlawful. It contains more than 5,800 names. Russian authorities, meanwhile, “categorically deny” that there are political prisoners in the country.
At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.
If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at [email protected].
To read Meduza’s exclusive content in English, please subscribe to our newsletter.