Free Word Association expresses its indignation over the continuing illegal detention of Stanislav Aseev, 27-year-old Ukrainian journalist and writer, in Donbassterritories uncontrolled by the Ukrainian government.
Stanislav Aseev disappeared in Donetsk in the early June 2017, and for a long time his whereabouts were undisclosed. In mid July, military representatives of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People Republic informed Stanislav’s mother on his detention. At the end of July, during Minsk humanitarian subgroup’s videoconference, representatives of “Lugansk Donetsk People Republic” officially confirmed to the media that they were keeping Aseev in detention.
At the same time, conditions of Aseev’s health is precarious. Ukrainian human rights defenders have information about his beatings in a custody. Yegor Firsov, an ex-deputy of the Ukrainian Council and Stanislav Aseev’s long-time friend, wrote on his Facebook page, “he lost a lot of weight. Probably he was tortured and that is why they inform us about his arrest only a month later. <…> Stanislav does not receive the necessary medicines, and the MGB representatives refuse to give it to him. Also, representatives of international organizations still do not have an access to Stanislav in order to get an accurate understanding of his health state.”
Stanislav Aseev (who published his writings under the nom de plume of Vasin) is a writer, a blogger and a journalist of the Ukrainian department of the Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty. In his texts, he expresses a personal unbiased view of what is happening in Donetsk, a city where he lives. The divergence of his point of view with the position of the DNR officials cannot be the grounds for his illegal arrest and detention.
Free Word Association protests against Aseev’s illegal detention. We consider this arrest as a violation of basic human freedoms and rights. We are worrying that in a custody, Aseev was a subject of tortures that inevitably led to the deterioration of his health. We call on the people and organizations that are responsible for keeping him detained, immediately allow international observers and doctors’ access to him, and release the journalist from illegal arrest as soon as possible.
Svetlana Aleksievich
Nadezhda Ajhikhina
Alexander Arkhangelsky
Leonid Bakhnov
Nune Barsegyan
Mikhail Berg
Tatiana Bonch-Osmolovskaya
Marina Boroditskaya
Natalya Chepik
Tatiana Chernysheva
Grigory Chkhartishvili
Maria Falikman
Elena Fanaylova
Sergey Gandlevskiy
Alisa Ganieva
Alexander Gelman
Kristina Gorelik
Varvara Gornostayeva
Mark Grinberg
Natalia Gromova
Yuly Gugolev
Natalia Demina
Vitaliy Dikson
Denis Dragunskiy
Olga Drobot
Alexander Ilichevskiy
Natalia Ivanova
Gennady Kalashnikov
Gennady Krasukhin
Irina Kravtsova
Grigory Kruzhkov
Natalya Mavlevich
Anton Nechaev
Pavel Nerler
Maxim Osipov
Sergey Parkhomenko
Dmitry Petrov
Maria Rybakova
Tatiana Scherbina
Alexey Slapovskiy
Zoia Svetova
Vyacheslav Sereda
Alla Shevelkina
Mikhail Shishkin
Boris Sokolov
Vladimir Sotnikov
Tatiana Sotnikova (Anna Berseneva)
Irina Staf
Sergey Stratanovskiy
Lubov Summ
Alexey Tsvetkov
Olga Varshaver
Marina Vishnevetskaya
Alina Vitukhnivskaya
Andrei Volos
Tatiana Voltskaya
Ludmila Ulitskaya
Victor Yesipov
Georgy Yefremov
Evgeny Yermolin