John Crowfoot on "The Dmitriev Affair - What Next?", a public event to be held on 19 December 2017, 19:30-21:00, at Pushkin House

posted 7 Dec 2017, 11:41 by Rights in Russia   [ updated 7 Dec 2017, 11:55 ]
7 December 2017

Pushkin House and Rights in Russia invite you to an evening discussion about Yury Dmitriev, the Gulag researcher who is currently on trial


Photo of Yury Dmitriev (c) Simeon Maisterman



The prosecution of Gulag researcher YURY DMITRIEV has not gone according to plan.

All involved, including the defence team, expected the 60-year-old historian to be found guilty in early September of making pornographic images and receive anything up to a 15-year sentence - https://dmitrievaffair.com

Instead, there has been an unprecedented groundswell of public protest in Russia, and concern abroad, over Dmitriev's persecution on evidently trumped-up charges. At the Petrozavodsk City Court Judge Marina Nosova and the prosecutor (now replaced) have been constantly wrong-footed during the closed hearings by Dmitriev's excellent defence counsel.

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On Tuesday, 19 December, the Pushkin Club and Rights in Russia are hosting an evening of discussion about this most unlikely cause célèbre.

http://www.pushkinhouse.org/events/2017/12/19/the-dmitriev-affair

There are three speakers - John Crowfoot, translator and manager of the Dmitriev Affair website; Bill Bowring, barrister, Professor of Law (Birkbeck College), an expert on Russia's post-Soviet legal and judicial systems; and Dr. Andrea Gullotta of Glasgow University, a historian and specialist on the Solovki Special Purpose Camp, who met and talked to Yury Dmitriev during his research trips to Karelia and the White Sea.

We invite you to celebrate and support "a most admirable man" (Natalya Solzhenitsyn), about whom more than 70 writers, film-makers, actors and priests have now spoken in glowing terms ( https://dmitrievaffair.com/support/video-clips/ ).

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We very much hope to see you on the Tuesday evening (do remember there will be seats for only 70).

If you cannot come, look out for a film of the event on YouTube soon afterwards, and be sure to add your name to the Change.org petition
https://www.change.org/p/chairman-of-petrozavodsk-city-court-a-a-sudakov-public-appeal-in-defense-of-yuri-dmitriev/fbog/35241705?recruiter=35241705&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=share_petition&utm_term=share_petition

in defence of YURY DMITRIEV, who has spent twelve months in custody, after a quarter century combing the forests and archives of Karelia, seeking any surviving trace of Stalin's numerous victims ...

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