Alexandra Yurevna Skochilenko (Russian: Александра Юрьевна Скочиленко), also known as Sasha Skochilenko, (born September 13, 1990, in Leningrad, Soviet Union) is a Russian artist and musician.

Alexandra Skochilenko
Sasha Skochilenko in a courtroom, 2022
Born	Alexandra Yurevna Skochilenko (1990-09-13) 13 September 1990 (age 32) Leningrad, Soviet Union (now St. Petersburg, Russia)
Alma mater	St. Petersburg State University
Occupation	Artist musician

Biography

Sasha is an alumna of the Smolny College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, St. Petersburg State University. She is an author of the "Book About Depression" (2014), which helped destigmatize mental health issues in Russia. She is an open lesbian and her partner has been involved in publicizing the course of her criminal case and the conditions of her detention.[1]

Russian invasion of Ukraine

After taking part in a protest against the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, Skochilenko was fined 10,000 rubles.[2]

On 31 March, Skochilenko was arrested for "putting fragments of paper in place of price tags, containing information about the use of the Russian armed forces" in a Perekrestok supermarket.[2] The messages attributed to her included information about Mariupol theatre airstrike on March 16: "The Russian army bombed an art school in Mariupol where about 400 people were hiding from the shelling."[3] Skochilenko was jailed for eight weeks pending trial, accused of being motivated by "political hatred for Russia". Under the recently introduced Russian fake news laws she faces a sentence of up to 10 years imprisonment if found guilty.[2] In a letter from her jail in April 2022, Alexandra wrote: “It just so happened that I represent everything that the Putin regime is so intolerant of: creativity, pacifism, LGBT, psycho-enlightenment, feminism, humanism and love for everything bright, ambiguous, unusual.”[1] On 30 May, the St. Petersburg District Court extended her pre-trial detention until July in a closed hearing.[4] In early-June, she was temporarily transferred to a psychiatric hospital, where staff refused to treat her for abdomen pain she was experiencing and refused to share information about her condition with her lawyer and partner. On 30 June, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs's Centre for Combating Extremism issued a report alleging that Skochilenko was a member of the Eighth Initiative Group, which it deemed a "radical protest feminist group." Skochilenko denied knowledge of the group. Following those claims, the court extended her pre-trial detention until September.[5]

Human rights groups raised concerns about the conditions of her detention, as she suffers from celiac disease, which requires a gluten-free diet that she has not consistently been allowed access to, and which has caused her significant weight loss and health concerns during her detention. As well, her partner has been denied permission to visit her while she had been under detention.[6] In a July interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Skochilenko further raised concerns about possible mistreatment, saying that she and the other prisoners in her cell had been forced to completely clean the cell three times a day by hand and the television in the cell was restricted to war films and pro-government news about the invasion.[7]

References

На других языках

[ru] Скочиленко, Александра Юрьевна