You're reading: Reuters: Free speech campaigners picket Russia with pictures of jailed journalists

Reuters: Free speech campaigners picket Russia with pictures of jailed journalists

Published June 13, 2018. Updated June 14 at 9:35 am

Activists burn flares, shout and carry a banner reading "Freedom for the Crimean prisoners!" in Moscow, on May 29, 2016, during a protest in support of Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov and Ukrainian political activist Alexander Kolchenko, who are jailed in Russia. Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, 39, was convicted of terrorism in August 2015 over arson attacks on pro-Russia political party offices in Crimea, a Black Sea peninsula annexed by Moscow in March 2014, and sentenced to 20 years in a prison camp. His alleged accomplice, environmental activist Alexander Kolchenko, was sentenced to 10 years. The two men are on a list of prisoners who could be handed over to Kyiv.

Photo by AFP

Free speech campaigners rolled out a soccer pitch in central Paris on June 13 with posters of jailed journalists as the players, in a demonstration about press freedom in Russia on the eve of the World Cup.

Standing like giant stickers from a collector’s album, the posters bore the faces of several journalists jailed in Russia, peering out form behind bars, under a banner reading “During the World Cup, repression continues”.