Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards

[The letter drew attention to a post on Facebook on May 25 made by Pavlensky’s partner, Oksana Shalygina, in support of the so-called Primorsky Partisans, a group of then-teenagers jailed in 2010 in the Russian Far East for a series of attacks on police officers. The group of six declared a guerrilla war on law-enforcement officers to protest corruption and lawlessness and were given lengthy prison sentences for the murder of three officers, robbery, and theft. Shalygina acted as Pavlensky’s representative at the Havel award ceremony on May 25 because the artist had been jailed pending sentencing for the Threat performance. He was subsequently found guilty of damaging a cultural site but released on June 8 in a surprising act of leniency. The HRF letter quotes Shalygina as writing on May 25: “We decided to give the award to the Primorsky Partisans because we think they deserve it.”  Pavlensky himself was videotaped on May 27 saying the same thing.

According to the letter, Pavlensky later said that his plan was actually to give the prize money to the legal defense team of the Primorsky Partisans — not to the group itself. This reportedly prompted the awarding committee to waver, but their resolve was said to have been strengthened after Pavlensky published an article on July 4 in which he redoubled his public support of the Primorsky Partisans. In the article, he called the prize committee “totalitarian” and effectively supporting “terror.”]