A Concordia psychology student’s engagement towards democracy and human rights in Russia.
On Sept. 5, around 25 people joined together for an evening of letter writing for Russian political prisoners organized by the Director of the Russian Canadian Democratic Alliance (RCDA) and Concordia psychology student Olga Babina.
The attendees, many of whom were Russian and Ukrainian, sat on the second floor of L’Orbite: Café Culturel Artistique à Montréal, where they wrote letters to Russian and Ukrainian political prisoners. A small space upstairs welcomed the Russian Canadian Democratic Alliance (RCDA).
The RCDA was founded in 2022, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The goal of the organization is to counter the perception of supposed apathy or indifference of the Russian public towards the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Babina arrived in Canada eight years ago from Orenburg in the south of Russia. She is one of the RCDA’s founding members and cannot return to her country because of her involvement in this organization.
Russian authorities consider the RCDA an “undesirable organization,” regarding any form of association with this group as a criminal offense. Many people avoid associating themselves with the group publicly for fear of arrest if they return to Russia or reprisals to family members still living in Russia.
According to Babina, the Russian public opinion of the war is not the one portrayed in Russian state media. Many Russians hold anti-war stances, but reliable figures are not available as it is “very hard to obtain reliable statistics from an authoritarian state,” Babina said.
There are currently over 1,000 political prisoners in Russia, according to human rights group OVD-Info. Many are imprisoned on charges related to national security.
“Sharing an anti-war post on social media, or being associated to LGBTQ+ groups is enough to get arrested in Russia,” Babina said.
Many of these prisoners are subject to torture and solitary confinement. Notably, during his imprisonment, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was repeatedly put into solitary confinement in violation of international law. Russian prison officials avoided breaking international law by removing him from solitary confinement and returning him there repeatedly in a matter of 15 minutes to an hour, therefore not violating the amount of time a prisoner can stay in solitary confinement in a row, Babina said.
The letters are sent online to OVD-Info, an independent human rights defence and media group, who will relay them to censors of the Russian state prisons before they can be given to prisoners. The letters are read by a Russian official who will decide whether or not to send them to a convict, sometimes opting to censor some of their contents. Strict guidelines are in place around content of letters, encouraging discussions over daily life events while discouraging questions of legal matters and proceedings.
RCDA has received several responses after sending their letters into Russian prisons. In their response letters, some political prisoners have written that they are immensely grateful for these messages of hope. Babina said they usually send out around 20 letters per meeting, with a record of 40 letters in one meeting.
According to OVD-Info, 801 people are involved in criminal lawsuits for anti-war activity in Russia since February 2022 and 19,847 people have been detained between then and December 2023 for anti-war stances. There are 8526 open cases under article 20.3.3 (“discreditation”) for discrediting the Russian Army, subjecting it to criticism, and 49 repressive laws have been implemented since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
This article has been edited to remove a paragraph containing incorrect information.
