Freedom Zone: Supporting Russian Political Prisoners

About

In Russia today, people are going to prison for a social media post, a donation, a hand-written sign, or saying out loud that they are against the war. They include teachers, doctors, students, pensioners, artists and journalists, and most of them are people the rest of the world has never heard of.

The scale is growing steadily. As of mid-2026, the Russian human rights project Memorial recognised 1,680 people as political prisoners, and its broader list of people deprived of liberty on politically motivated and unlawful grounds contained 5,567 names. It learns of roughly 500 new politically motivated prosecutions every quarter, or about five people a day. Memorial itself has been targeted as well: in April 2026 Russia's Supreme Court designated it an "extremist" organisation.

This event is a chance to understand what is happening, to hear it from the people living through it, and to do something small that makes a real difference.

The film
We begin with the screening of a documentary about Russian political prisoners and their families, called "Being a political prisoner's relative". [Russian with English subtitles]

Hear from the families of political prisoners
After the film, we'll be joined by relatives of political prisoners for a conversation about what happens to a family when someone they love is jailed for their views: the court cases, the prison visits, the costs, and the isolation that often follows.