Dear
Friend,
Just this past weekend we celebrated news that journalists Stanislav Aseyev and Oleh Halaziuk, both contributors to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, were free after an ordeal of more than two years of imprisonment in the Donesk region of Eastern Ukraine.
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As my colleague, PEN America Eurasia Project Director Polina Kovaleva, put it, "their supposed crime was journalism. Reporters and writers have been frequent targets of Russia-backed separatists during the brutal conflict in eastern Ukraine. Those separatists’ kangaroo courts and sham proceedings kept these two men from their families and work for far too long.”
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As part of our campaign for their freedom, this fall PEN America mounted a protest on the street outside the Russian consulate here in New York City. As the two journalists' colleague, Radio Free Europe Media Director Joanna Levinson, put it in an email to us, "You were at the top of my tweet-and-thank-you list this morning! We are so grateful to you and Pen America colleagues. Stas and Oleh would not have been released without you."
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But while Stas and Oleh are free, hundreds of other writers and journalists remain behind bars. Please make a gift today so that they, too, can be welcomed home.
Thank you,
Thomas Melia
Washington Director
PEN America
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