More than 34 million rubles were collected by the media marathon for the benefit of political prisoners

On June 12, Russia Day, independent mass media held an online marathon in support of political prisoners. It was held under the slogan “You are not alone” and lasted from 9 am to 10 pm. 34447623 rubles were collected in 13 hours. The money will be used to provide targeted assistance to political prisoners and their families and to pay lawyers.

Such editions and channels as “Meduza”, “Mediazona”, “Rain”, “Navalny LIVE”, “Popular politics”, “Support service”, “Kholod”, channels of Maksym Kats, Dmitry Kolezev, Alexander Plyushchev took part in the marathon. , “Novaya Gazeta” and “Khodorkovsky Live”. The journalists united in a joint broadcast, which was broadcast on their YouTube channels. Civil activists – for example, Feminist Anti-War Resistance – also joined the action.

For the first four hours, it was also possible to send funds to support political prisoners from Russian cards. The meeting was blocked after the mourning of the correspondent of the state TV channel RT Konstantin Prydybailo. He wrote that he “broke donations from Russia for the extremist “solidarity marathon”. According to Prydybailo, he contacted the owners of DonatePay, after which they removed the fee.

• According to the statistics of the human rights center “Memorial”, there are currently 553 political prisoners in Russian prisons. 409 of them are persecuted for religious reasons (Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Hizb-ut Tahrir movement, and others), 144 for their political position. Another 565 people are persecuted without deprivation of liberty. These are only those whom “Memorial” officially recognized as political prisoners.
• According to OVD-Info, last year in Russia, in 2022, only 25 days passed without a citizen being detained by the police for expressing a political position.