Sakharov Center Convicted, Fined

Sakharov Center Director Yuri Samodurov and exhibition curator Ludmila Vasilovskaya were each fined 100,000 rubles—about U.S. $3,570—in a verdict handed down by Moscow’s Taganskaya District Court on March 28 on charges of “incitement to religious hatred.” Painter Anna Mikhalchuk, who was also charged, was acquitted.

The charges were based on their role in the organization of the January 2003 exhibition at the Center’s museum entitled “Caution! Religion.” The exhibit was closed after attackers sprayed graffiti in the museum and destroyed many of the art works, claiming them offensive to the Russian Orthodox Church; the attackers were not charged. Hate crimes laws were to the contrary used to prosecute the leadership of the Sakharov Center, Russia’s only human rights museum.

The court ruled that the exhibition was “mocking and blasphemous” in nature, but rejected the prosecution’s request for a penalty of three years imprisonment, accepting as an extenuating circumstance the human rights work of the accused. The conviction was based on article 282 (2) of the Criminal Code, on the charge of “incitement of religious hatred,” a charge the exhibition organizers and participant artists have vigorously denied.

Read March 24, 2005 Media Alert