Russian Activist Imprisoned for Peaceful Environmental Protests, 15 October 2021

Yesterday, a court in the city of Kolomna, Russia sentenced Viacheslav Yegorov to 15 months in prison for repeatedly taking part in peaceful protests in 2018 against the “import” of trash from Moscow. It is ironic that this sentence came less than a week after the UN Human Rights Council recognized the right to a healthy environment as a universal human right...

Moscow generates enormous amounts of trash. In 2018, large-scale, centralized recycling programs didn’t exist, and many landfills in the Moscow region became overfilled, so regional authorities redistributed Moscow trash to other landfills in places like Kolomna. Activists there explained to us that these sites weren’t designed for so much trash, and that the sharp increase resulted in contamination of underground water and eruptions of toxic “landfill gases”...

First, Kolomna activists filed complaints, but they didn’t get meaningful responses or results. Then they started protests to stop what they described as an endless line of trash trucks pouring into their region. Despite the peaceful nature of the protests, activists faced violent police dispersals, detention, and harassment...

Authorities opened three administrative offences cases against Yegorov for unlawful protesting, and the fourth became the basis for the criminal case against him. Russian law allows for criminal prosecution for repeated violation of public assembly rules...