Repression
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With her colleague Svetlana Petrïitchouk, in mid-December, the director received a six-year sentence in a penal colony. A new example of the Kremlin's relentless repression, she responded from her prison in writing to questions from “Libération”.
A cold one-story barracks building in the village of Vlasikha, an hour's drive from the center of Moscow. A closed village where the headquarters of the Strategic Missile Forces and the central command center of the land-based strategic nuclear forces of the Russian Armed Forces are located. This December 16, in the barracks where 60 people came from the capital, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Dmitri Muratov, there is a special room to watch the broadcast of the hearings. This is where journalists follow the trials of the Military Court of Appeal, located behind barbed wire in this village closed to all. Only passes specially issued for the occasion allow entry.
Two women appear on the control screen. Evgenia Berkovitch, 39 years old, director and poet, hair pulled back into a ponytail, dressed all in black, and playwright Svetlana Petriïtchouk, 44 years old, dressed in gray. They have been incarcerated in a Moscow prison for almost two years. On July 8, they were sentenced to six years in prison for “apology of terrorism”which the prosecution claims to have read in a room, Finist, le clair fauconput together by the two artists and which, in reality, denounced jihadism. The play, written by
