OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
December 7, 2016
Vladimir Putin
President of the Russian Federation
Moscow, Kremlin
Mr. President:
The League of Ukrainian Canadians takes this opportunity to call your attention to the case of Nataliya G. Sharina, who has become a subject of the Ukrainian Diaspora’s deepest concerns. Nataliya Sharina is the former Director of the Library of Ukrainian Literature in Moscow, who has been detained on the suspicion of inciting ethnic hatred and embezzlement of library funds. The Ukrainian Diaspora has closely followed her court hearings of November 3rd and November 23rd, 2016 and is well aware of the evidence presented against N.G. Sharina.
It has become evident that the library books seized by the police officers were added to the alleged evidential documents against N.G. Sharina. According to the repeated claims of the library’s staff members, the books were planted prior to the police searches by unknown visitors. Moreover, a number of the books were located in the library’s office, which is inaccessible to the visitors, and thus the items would not have been disseminated to the library’s readership. Furthermore, the library staff monitored the official list of “extremist literature”, conducted daily verifications of their collection and often removed various banned texts from circulation. Since this was a daily vigorous procedure, the banned literature was never present in the library collection. Thus, it is evident that the indictment of inciting ethnic hatred and disseminating anti-Russian propaganda is a deliberate and blatant fabrication of evidence.
The accusation of embezzlement of library funds, according to the Russian Criminal Code Article 160, Sections 3 and 4, is also baseless. The investigators claim that library funds were used to pay for N.G. Sharina’s legal defense of an older case that was dismissed in 2013, as well as for hiring an in-house legal counsel for the library. However, as established by her lawyers, all payments and monetary compensations were approved by Moscow’s Department of Culture. Since the defense has evidence of the approved financial transactions, then the count of embezzlement has been arbitrarily brought forth by the investigation.
Furthermore, we are concerned with the witnesses and questioning methods used by the prosecutor in court. In particular, the former director of the Library of Ukrainian Literature, Valentyna Slusarchuk, was questioned about the political viewpoints of Yuri Kononeko, the library’s former staff member and Ukrainian citizen who has not worked in the library since 2007. In addition, V. Slusarchuk was also asked about Moscow’s Ukrainian community activist Valeriy Semenenko who had never been employed in the Ukrainian library. For instance, the prosecutor asked the following question: “Does Kononenko consider himself a supporter of Ukraine, oriented towards the Western world?” This question is irrelevant and beyond reasonable comprehension. If in 2007, Yuri Kononenko considered himself a supporter of Ukraine what connection or crime would it constitute for Nataliya Sharina?
In our perspective, the case of N.G. Sharina is heavily politicized and the prosecution would have to go through great measures to portray N.G Sharina as an “extremist.” There is enough evidence to conclude that the only reason behind Ms. Sharina’s arrest is the fact that she was the director of the only state-run Ukrainian library in Russia. Since 2007, the library has been under immense political pressure, experienced numerous searches while the staff members were indicted in various legal cases. Nataliya Sharina received numerous injuries as a result of a police beating and spent days seeking treatment in a hospital. In addition to the library, the search was also conducted in Sharina’s home, as well as the homes of a number of the library’s staff. During the search, the authorities seized all digital devices which could be connected to personal social media accounts. Since October of last year, N.G. Sharina has been under house arrest with access to a lawyer but without the right to use the Internet or communicate with the outside world. Other than Russia, there are no examples where a Ukrainian library would experience such severe pressures from the authorities on multiple occasions for allegedly breaking multiple laws.
There has been much press coverage of the case concerning the Ukrainian library in Moscow, which also has included the reporting of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). The attempts to close the library was also a subject of the 2007 (December) correspondence between the former President of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, and your office. Over a year ago, the human rights society “Memorial” had recognized Nataliya G. Sharina as a political prisoner.
The case of N. G. Sharina is an example of political pressure which is part of a larger anti-Ukrainian sentiment in Russia. Several years ago, the Ministry of Justice cancelled through the courts the registration of two federal Ukrainian organizations – the “Association of Ukrainians in Russia” (AUR) and one of the biggest civic communities of the Ukrainian minority the “Federal Nation-Cultural Autonomy of Ukrainians in Russia” (FNCAUR). Moreover, the Ministry of Justice declined the registration of another federal Ukrainian organization – the Ukrainian Russian Congress (URC). The listed cases are only a fraction of mounting examples of political pressure against Ukrainians in Russia.
As the guarantor of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, we urge you to do everything in your power to ensure justice in N.G. Sharina’s case. We appeal to the prosecution not to present the court with the books which were not in the library during the search, and urge the prosecution not to utilize the citations of third party political views as evidence. The Ukrainian community around the world is closely following the details in the case of N.G. Sharina. If the former Director of the Library of Ukrainian Literature receives a sentence of imprisonment, the democratic world will perceive it as an indicative and aggressive step in breaching human rights, which will also escalate the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
The case of N.G. Sharina has received much international attention and in terms of legal ethics has been equated to the prominent case of Nadiya Savchenko. Therefore, we believe that this case has significant consequences for future relations. In Ukraine, there are thousands of state-funded libraries with active Russian collections, and no librarian has been detained on allegations of “extremism.”
On behalf of the Ukrainian community in Canada and worldwide, we also appeal to you to lift the November 3, 2016 ban on loaning library books from the Library of Ukrainian Literature in Moscow. Despite N.G. Sharina’s legal matter, library members and general readership should continue to have access to the books in the library and be permitted to loan them for a period of 14 days, as in other countries.
The government of your country should serve all of the peoples of the Russian Federation, including its large Ukrainian minority.
