Yes, Life! Last Word From Sasha Skochilenko

33-year-old artist from St. Petersburg Sasha Skochilenko has been in jail since April 2022. The girl is being tried under an article about military “fakes” for five stickers with information about the consequences of the invasion of Ukraine, which she used to replace price tags in the Perekrestok store. The prosecutor asked for eight years in prison for her. During the trial, more than once it seemed that the Vasileostrovsky District Court and the security forces were mocking Skochilenko: during a search in the cell of the prisoner suffering from heart disease, they confiscated medications, she was not released from the meeting to replace the batteries in the cardiac monitor, and yesterday, when she was supposed to speak at debate, the judge kicked the audience out of the room. Today, Sasha Skochilenko nevertheless uttered the last word - she felt sorry for the state prosecutor, called her case “ridiculous” and found kind words for the investigator who did not bring it to the end and resigned from the Investigative Committee. Mediazona publishes the full text of her speech.

Your Honor! Dear Court!

My criminal case is so strange and funny that it was opened exactly on April 1st. My case is so strange and funny that sometimes it seems to me that I’ll walk into the courtroom for a new court hearing, and confetti will suddenly fall from the sky, and everyone will stand up and shout: “It’s a prank! Played!" My case is so strange and funny that the employees of Detention Center No. 5 open their eyes wide and exclaim: “Is this really what people are imprisoning for now?” My case is such that even the SVO supporters I've met don't think I deserve a prison sentence for my act.

My case is that my investigator quit before it was closed. In a personal conversation with my lawyer, he said: “I did not come to the Investigative Committee to deal with cases like Sasha Skochilenko’s.”

And he abandoned my business, which promised him brilliant career growth and had already earned him an asterisk on his shoulder straps. He left the Investigative Committee and went to work at the Voentorg store. I respect his actions immensely and believe that we are similar - we both acted according to our conscience.

Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code itself is fundamentally discriminatory, because it punishes only a certain circle of people - those who do not serve in government bodies. Just think about it: the information that I disseminated was obviously false for my investigators, unlike me - nevertheless, they disseminated it among their investigative department, as well as among the prosecutor's office and judicial authorities, insulted military witnesses with this information and created a reason for enormous public outcry.

Thanks to my investigators and prosecutors, the information I disseminated reached thousands of people in Russia and around the world. If I had not been arrested, one grandmother, a cashier and security guard at the Perekrestok store, would have found out this information.

And on two of these three persons, as follows from the materials of my criminal case, the so-called “price tags” did not make any impression at all. Tell me, do investigators distribute drugs among government officials when they want to prove a person’s guilt under Article 228 of the Criminal Code? Such employees themselves would be judged under the same article. So why are neither my investigators nor my state prosecutor being tried under Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code, but only me?

If these five pieces of paper are so terrible, then why was this trial even started? So that we pronounce these theses dozens of times, which, according to the state prosecutor, so seriously threaten public safety? But here we were, saying the texts from the price tags throughout the entire process. And what? Did the earth open up because of this? Has a revolution begun in the country? Did soldiers begin to fraternize at the fronts? Nothing of the sort happened. So what's the problem?

The state prosecutor mentioned more than once that my act was extremely dangerous for society and the state.

How little faith in our state and society does our prosecutor have if he believes that our statehood and public safety can be destroyed by five small pieces of paper? When a person starts a military rebellion, which caused enormous damage to our country, a criminal case is opened against him and closed within a day. No one suffered from my act, and I have been in custody for more than a year and a half - together with murderers, thieves, seducers of minors and organizers of prostitution. Is the so-called damage allegedly caused by me comparable to these crimes?

Every court verdict is a message for society. Regardless of how you judge my actions, you will probably agree that I showed courage and integrity, I was not hypocritical, I was honest with myself and with the court, and I acted in accordance with my moral compass. And you will agree that I have them, even if others are close to you personally. In the jargon of investigators, putting a person in a pre-trial detention center is called “taking prisoner.” So, I did not give up and did not bend in captivity, under the threat of persecution, illness and hunger.

And if the verdict is a message for the people, then think about what you are telling the people, our citizens, by condemning me? Why should you give up? Why should you be a hypocrite? That you need to admit something of which you are innocent? Why can't we feel sorry for our soldiers? That you can’t wish for a peaceful sky above your head? That our society and state can collapse from five small pieces of paper? Is this really what you want to tell people during times of crisis, instability, depression and stress?

My trial is widely publicized in Russia and around the world, tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of people follow it, books are written about my trial and documentaries are made. So no matter what verdict you give, you will go down in history. Perhaps you will go down in history as the person who imprisoned me, perhaps as the person who acquitted me, perhaps as the person who made a neutral decision and gave me a fine, a suspended sentence or time served. Everyone sees and knows that you are not judging a terrorist. You are not judging an extremist. You are not even judging a political activist. You are judging a pacifist.

I'm a pacifist. Pacifists have always existed. This is a special kind of people who consider life to be the highest value of all. We believe that any conflict can be resolved peacefully. I can’t even kill a spider; I’m scared to imagine taking someone’s life.

War comes on the initiative of warriors, but peace comes thanks to pacifists. And when you imprison pacifists, you delay the long-awaited day of peace.

Yes, I believe that life is sacred. Oh yes, life! If we discard all the tinsel of this world such as money, power, fame, position in society, the bottom line is only that. Oh yes, life! She is stubborn, she is persistent, she is incredible, touching, amazing, strong. It originated on Earth, and so far we have not found analogues for it even in deep space. It can break through asphalt, destroy stones, it can turn from a small sprout into a gigantic baobab, from a microscopic cell into a giant whale. It inhabits the peaks, hides in the Mariana Trench, exists in the Arctic ice and in the hot desert. Its most perfect form is man. Man is a very intelligent life form. This is a life that can become aware of itself. Realize your own mortality. True, most often we do not remember this and live as if we will live forever. But in reality, human life is fleeting. It's negligibly short. All we can do is prolong the brief moment of bliss. All living people want to live. Even on the necks of the hanged men there are traces of scratches from nails. This means that at the very last moment they really want to survive.

In what conditions is Sasha Skochilenko awaiting her verdict Lawyer: Sasha Skochilenko, arrested for leaflets about Mariupol, had a seizure in the temporary detention center due to the inability to follow a diet The lawyer spoke about the deterioration of the condition of the arrested St. Petersburg artist Sasha Skochilenko, they are not giving her the food necessary for her diet FSIN: in the pre-trial detention center they are not a diet is provided for people with celiac disease, which was diagnosed in the artist Sasha Skochilenko. The girl arrested because of anti-war price tags, Sasha Skochilenko, said that she was being bullied by fellow inmates in the pre-trial detention center. Sasha Skochilenko spoke about severe pain and a ban on walking on the street during a psychiatric examination in the case of price tags. Employees The pre-trial detention center in which Sasha Skochilenko is being held explained the refusal to bring her a sufficient amount of water by the weight of the bottles. Sasha Skochilenko’s girlfriend was taken by ambulance to the hospital after a guard sprayed tear gas in the court. Four searches were carried out in Sasha Skochilenko’s cell in two weeks; during one of them, pre-trial detention center officers confiscated a portion of medicines

Ask a person who has just had a cancerous tumor removed what life is and how valuable it is. Today, scientists and doctors around the world are fighting to increase human life expectancy and find cures for deadly diseases. Therefore, I don’t understand: why war? After all, war shortens lives. War is death. It was 2021, the coronavirus epidemic, we lost our elderly loved ones - grandparents, mentors, teachers. We experienced so much pain, anxiety and mourning, and only we began to get back on our feet, began to live... War. Now we are losing young people. Again death, again grief, again pain. And I can’t understand at all: why the war?

Call it what you want - I was mistaken, or I was wrong, or I was fooled into thinking... I will remain with my opinion and my truth. And I don’t think that this or that truth should be forced by law.

The state prosecutor believes a completely different truth than I do. He is confident in the existence of so-called “NATO hangers-on” or that all independent media are funded from abroad. But the difference between our prosecutor and me is that I would never put him in jail over this.

I'm sorry if I offended anyone with my actions. My imprisonment in a pre-trial detention center, where I communicated with very different people, unlike me, allowed me to understand that each person believes in his own truth. The same applies to the attitude towards the SVO. And it is a great tragedy that we do not all share the same truth and do not accept each other’s truth, this creates a split in society, destroys families and separates people close to each other, increases the level of aggression, multiplies hostility on Earth and increasingly distances us from the long-awaited peace . I will not sin against the truth if I say that every person in this room wants the same thing - peace.

Why fight if we are all that each other has in this world full of troubles, disasters and difficulties? Can all the wealth and all the power of the universe redeem your loved one from the captivity of death? No, not money, not power, not a career, not an apartment, not a car.

We are all that each other has. And I have favorite people who are dear to me more than anything in the world. They come to this hall, and they care about my life, health and freedom. They don't want me to go to jail. Waiting for me at home is my elderly mother, sister, and beloved girl, who was given a terrible diagnosis of cancer. And I don’t yet know the person, other than the state prosecutor, who wants me to go to jail.

True, I think that the state prosecutor, deep down in his soul, does not want this. It seems to me that he came to the prosecutor’s office to imprison real criminals and villains - murderers, rapists, seducers of minors. But everything turned out to be completely different: you need to imprison those who need to be imprisoned, and this is the key to moving up the career ladder. This is an established system. Let us at least now not pretend that this is not so. I don't blame you. You care about your career, about a stable position in the future, in order to provide for your family, give them bread and a roof over their heads, and put your future or already born children on their feet. But what will you tell them about? About how you put a seriously ill woman in prison for five small pieces of paper? No, no doubt you will talk about other matters. You probably console yourself that you are just doing your job. But what will you do when the pendulum swings the other way?

This is a historical law: liberals are replaced by conservatives, conservatives by liberals. After the natural death of one political leader, another comes with an opposite course, and the first become last, and the last become first. This may seem strange to you, but I sympathize with you.

Even though I am behind bars, I am freer than you. I can make my own decisions, I can say what I think, I can quit my job if I'm forced to do something I don't want to do. I have no enemies, I am not afraid of being left without money or even without a roof over my head.

I'm not afraid of not having a great career, of appearing funny, vulnerable or weird. I'm not afraid to be different from others. Perhaps that is why my state is so afraid of me and others like me and keeps me in a cage like a most dangerous animal.

But man is not a wolf to man. It’s easy to just get angry at each other because of different positions, but to love each other, try to understand and find compromises is very difficult. It is so unbearably difficult that sometimes it seems simply impossible - at such moments, violence or coercion seems to be the only way out. But that's not true! It is necessary to learn to love and resolve conflicts with the help of words, this is the only way to get out of the moral crisis in which we find ourselves.

Your Honor! With your sentence, you can set an example for everyone - an example of how a conflict can be resolved with the help of words, love, mercy, compassion, and not by forcing the so-called truth through a criminal sentence. This will be a big step towards reducing anger, towards healing and reconciling society.

Your Honor! I understand that for you this is just a job, an ordinary matter, long hours and a lot of paperwork. Probably, in the midst of this routine, as with any work, the true is blurred and forgotten. But the truth is that you have great power: to decide human destinies. In this case, my fate, my health, my life and the happiness of my loved ones are in your power. I trust that you will use this power wisely.

Editor: Dmitry Tkachev