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December 14, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 8
the charges, which he and human rights groups call politically motivated.
Sentsov said he was beaten for 24 hours in an attempt to force him to confess. Russian authori- ties have refused to investigate the allegations
of torture.
In May this year, he began a hunger strike, de- manding the release of all Ukrainians held on political grounds in Russia and annexed Crimea. Sentsov ended the 145-day hunger strike on Octo- ber 6, 2018. In a handwritten statement, he ex- plained that he had no choice but to halt the hun- ger strike to avoid being force-fed by the Russian authorities due to the critical state of his health.
Ukraine’s calls to swap Sentsov and Ukrainian journalist Roman Suschenko, arrested in Moscow in 2016 on espionage charges, for Russian prison- ers, have so far been rejected by Moscow.
Other laureates in the history of the prize have also been prevented from attending because of detention, most recently Raif Badawi in 2015. Sentsov is the first laureate from eastern Europe since 2009, when the Russian human rights cen- tre, Memorial, received the prize.
Thirty years since it was first awarded, Gahler said the award also draws attention to the struggle of all Ukrainian political prisoners currently behind bars in Russia and the annexed Crimean peninsula.
Created through a parliamentary resolution in De- cember 1985, the prize bears the name of promi- nent Soviet-era dissident, Andrei Sakharov, joint inventor of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, 1975 Nobel
Peace Prize-winner and campaigner for human rights and nuclear disarmament in the Soviet Union.
The prize was named after him in recognition
his courageous defence of human rights, among which the freedom of thought and expression, to the detriment of his professional career and per- sonal freedom.
The prize was awarded for the first time in 1988 jointly to Nelson Mandela and posthumously to Soviet dissident Anatoli Marchenko, who died in 1986 after a three-month-long hunger strike for the release of all Soviet dissidents. The public outcry caused by his death pushed the USSR’s last President Mikhail Gorbachev to authorise the release of political prisoners from Soviet jails.
Sentsov’s lawyer Dinze told journalists in Stras- bourg that his client’s health had improved some- what lately although the director hadn’t expressed much emotion about winning the prize.
“He is about to be released from hospital and he looks a bit better, his cheeks look at bit rosier and he become a bit more animated when he
is talking about his case or about his new film,” said Dinze.
“Sentsov is a very quiet person,” he added. “He rarely shows his emotions and he is trying to con- tain them after these years in incarceration. He says we shouldn’t forget the other people unfairly locked up. Of course, he’s pleased to win the prize but he hopes it will ultimately influence the Rus- sians and trigger a prisoner swap.”