Translated material
Sentsov received the American Pen-Center Award
Representatives of the Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov, serving a 20-year term in the fabricated case of terrorism in Crimea, awarded the award of the American Pen-Center "Freedom to write" awarded to him. This was reported on the organization’s website.
Sentsov was awarded for short films “The Bananka Fish” and “The Horn of the Bull” and the Gamer Fit and the Horn is well caught.
The political prisoner was represented by his cousin Natalya Kochneva (Kaplan), the deputy of the Verkhovna Rada Mustafa Nayyem and a member of the Kharkov human rights group Galina Koynyash. The guests of the ceremony showed a video about the fate of Sentsov from Euromaidan to the annexation of Crimea, abduction, court and sending to Yakutia. Kochneva brought Sentsov’s letter to the guests of the ceremony from IK-1 of a maximum security in Yakutsk. He was read out by actor Alan Cumming.
In a letter, Sentsov calls the prison "a meat grinder of human destinies, falling into which, you stop believing in justice, but you do not stop fighting for it." The director writes that "those close people who were with you, the time you spent with them, and the heat that they gave you is the most important thing in life."
"When I last traveled to the Maidan, where people had already begun to die, my mother said:" Why are you going there? After all, you have two children! "I replied that this is why I am going there and I don’t want them to live in the country of slaves. We won then, but it turned out that it was not completely. And the struggle continues, but without me. And I am sitting in prison and, like any prisoner, it is very difficult for me to answer a simple children's question:“ Dad, when you return! ”, The letter ends.
The American Pen-Center has been presenting the Assemite by Barbara Goldsmith a prize of Barbara Goldsmith since 1987. The award is awarded to journalists and writers who are faced with persecution, fighting for the right to freely express their opinion. Of the 41 laureates of the award in prison at the time of its award, 37 were released thanks to the public resonance, which was caused by awards.
On March 29, at the Nick film award ceremony, her laureates performed in support of political prisoners . Sentsova in her speeches was mentioned by actress Elena Koreneva and director Alexander Sokurov.
On December 24, a group of members of the Russian Pen-Center, writers and scientists made an appeal to Putin with a call to have mercy on Sentsov. Under the document, 60 members of the Russian Pen-Center signed. They were joined by 13 members of the free historical society, writers Sergey Gandlevsky, Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Vladimir Voinovich and many others. In total, there is 80 signatures under the appeal.
Sentsov issued a sentence for 20 strict regime on August 25, 2015, the North Caucasus District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don. The second person involved in the case - the left activist Alexander Kolchenko - received a 10 -year term ( 
Neither Sentsov nor Kolchenko pleaded guilty.
In October 2016, it was reported that the Russian Ministry of Justice refused Ukraine to issue political zones. Officials referred to the fact that Sentsov and Kolchenko after the annexation of Crimea became Russian citizens, and therefore, according to Russian laws, even if they have citizens of other states, they are not subject to time to retire to these countries. In fact, however, neither Sentsov nor Kolchenko became citizens of Russia. Both political prisoners have repeatedly emphasized that only Ukrainian citizenship have.
As Kochneva reported, the Yakutsk IK-1 administration repeatedly placed Sentsova in a schizo . Meanwhile, lawyer Dmitry Dinze, who visited the Police in a colony in December, reported that he had "everything is fine." The director told the lawyer that during the imprisonment he wrote five scenarios and one story .