Russia jails another eco activist ahead of Games

A Russian court in the Sochi region on Wednesday jailed an ecological activist for five days on charges of disobeying police, the latest environmental campaigner to be sent to prison ahead of the Winter Olympics. Activist Igor Kharchenko of the Environmental Watch on North Caucasus (EWNC) group, was given the five-day administrative jail term by a court in the city of Krasnodar, the capital of the region where Olympic host Sochi is located. His detention comes just two days after another activist with the EWNC, Yevgeny Vitishko, was jailed for 15 days, purportedly for swearing on public transport. The group has denounced both sentences and accused the Russian authorities of deliberately trying to muzzle environmental activists ahead of the Games opening on Friday. The EWNC said that Kharchenko's car had been attacked on Tuesday by a group of men who were acting at the behest of the police. The police then appeared shortly afterwards and he was arrested. It said that in the hearing at the Krasnodar court, Kharchenko had been deprived of his right to a lawyer and was denied the chance to speak in his own defence. The hearing lasted just minutes and he was jailed for five days for "disobeying a lawful command from a police officer". "This latest unjust verdict on an EWNC activist, just two days before the opening of the Olympic Games, has just one aim -- to intimidate the ecologist community who consider the holding of these Games to be a national shame," said a statement from the EWNC. The EWNC and other environmental activists have long argued that the holding of the Winter Olympics in what were almost pristine sites on the Black Sea and in the Caucasus mountains have permanently wrecked the environment. "Just days away from the official opening of the Sochi Winter Olympics, the Russian authorities are using every trick in the book to muzzle freedom of expression and silence dissenting voices," said Sergei Nikitin, director of Amnesty International’s Moscow Office.