Czech Senators ask Putin to release Sentsov
Czech Senators wrote a letter to the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin calling for the release of the Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Sentsov who was illegally imprisoned in Russia, as reported by the Embassy of Ukraine in the Czech Republic on Twitter.
"Each injustice caused by the State to any person that was later redressed reduces future tension and contributes to recovery of the society. That is why the release of Sentsov will be a sort of cure for your country,” the statement reads.
The filmmaker Sentsov was arrested in the Crimea in 2014. In August 2015, in the city of Rostov-on-Don, he was sentenced to 20 years in a high-security prison for allegedly organizing a separatist community in the territory of annexed Crimea. Sentsov is serving out his sentence in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Area in Russia, in a facility better known as “The White Bear.”
On May 14, 2018, Sentsov began an indefinite hunger strike, demanding the release of all Ukrainian political prisoners in Russia.
Ukrainian and Russian Commissioners for Human rights agreed to visit 34 political prisoners in the territories of both countries. Russian and Ukrainian human rights commissioners will visit the prisons after an agreement between Ukraine and the Russian Federation that was reached during the telephone conversation between Poroshenko and Putin on June 9.
Ukrainian human rights commissioner Lyudmila Denisova, who was in Russia on June 15, was not allowed to visit any Ukrainian political prisoner. She was not allowed to contact Sentsov via video link either.