AR-application to amplify the voice of Kremlin prisoners
#PrisonersVoice
challenge
Russian impunity
Even before the beginning of their full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia had held hundreds of illegally-convicted Ukrainians of various professions, ages, and genders in the occupied territories. They were tortured, morally humiliated, deprived of basic needs, and kept in unsanitary conditions.
Since 2014, Ukrainian and international organizations have not had access to these captives, which allowed the Kremlin even further impunity to abuse these captives and carry out a foreign policy of aggression. Over the eight years before the full-scale invasion, Russian authorities created more than 200 illegal detention sites for imprisoned Ukrainians within the occupied territories.
The situation deteriorated significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, almost 99 Ukrainian citizens were detained in Russian prisons in Crimea, including 76 Crimean Tatars. At least 234 Ukrainians were held captive in occupied Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts. All of them are victims of repression on political, national, and religious grounds. They include Ukrainian scientists, doctors, activists, journalists, writers, human rights defenders, entrepreneurs, and people of working professions who were imprisoned on fabricated charges.
At the same time, the international community did not pay much attention to the fates of Ukrainian prisoners, especially after the liberation of the most famous Russian-held Ukrainian political prisoner, director Oleh Sentsov. They were subsumed by other issues on the world agenda. It was necessary to invent new, engaging methods and tools to remind European politicians, diplomats, public activists, and the media about Russia's crimes.
solutions
Be heard: real stories in virtual reality
In October 2020, the #PrisonersVoice mobile application was presented at the Ukrainian Crisis Media Center. With the help of the latest augmented reality technology, we presented the stories of Ukrainian political prisoners: Oleh Sentsov, Volodymyr Balukh, and Oleksandr Kolchenko.
The simulated augmented reality led users through the ordeals that these prisoners endured, : from their initial detention to long days they spent in Russian prison colonies to their eventual liberation and return home to Ukraine. AR technology helped participants understand the experiences of Russian captivity through the eyes of political prisoners who endured it.
The stories of these Kremlin prisoners were translated into English, French, Polish, and German. In addition to the application, we published the stories and short biographies of 111 Ukrainian prisoners in Russian captivity on the project's website. We also sent materials about the project along with with a request to sign a petition for these political prisoners' release to 500 European politicians and opinion leaders.
"It is our duty to talk about them and to bring attention. After all, it is like a light in a room with cockroaches: they scatter in different directions because they are afraid of this light," argued Ukrainian director and former political prisoner Oleh Sentsov.
In order to amplify the voices of these prisoners, the Internews Ukraine team enlisted information support from the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ukraine Verstehen analytical project, and the magazine New Eastern Europe. We also joined a large-scale campaign of the same name from the Center for Civil Liberties. Downloading the app is one of the three steps that our partners have called for. Supporters can also sign a petition in support of political prisoners and become a volunteer.
"These campaigns serve two important functions. First, they allow all people and organizations to get involved and make a small contribution to the release of the Kremlin's prisoners. Second, they help keep this topic on the agenda. After all, in a world of fierce competition with a huge number of problems, this needs to be constantly talked about," said Oleksandra Matviychuk, the chair of the board of the Center for Civil Liberties who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022 on behalf of the organization.
result
Brough the attention of the European community to Ukrainian political prisoners
The #PrisonersVoice initiative was joined by well-known European journalists Jakub Kalenski, Joseph Pazderka, Pavel Havlichek, and Robert van der Noordaa, diplomats Chris Alexander, Jan Pieklo, Yuriy Vitrenko, and Vasyl Zvarych, experts Giedrius Sakalauskas, Paul Niland, and Gennady Maksak, along with members of NGOs and the media. They took part in a social media hashtag campaign, spoke about the project on their pages, and created media materials.
Thanks to the joint efforts of Ukrainian activists and foreign partners, it was possible to achieve significant results:
- The AR-application was downloaded more than 2,300 times in Google Play and Apple Store;
- the project's promo campaign of the project in social networks reached more than 2,600,000 people;
- journalists of the multimedia project UkraineWorld.org created 5 articles about the campaign for international media;
- 80 articles about the project were published in prominent foreign outlets, including Ukraine Verstehen, Open Democracy, Atlantic Council, and Notes from Poland;
- 3 interviews with the subjects of the project were published in the popular Ukrainian outlets Hromadske, ZN.UA, and NV;
- the project was named one of the 15 best initiatives supported by the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation (UCF) in 2020;
- the #PrisonersVoice campaign was presented to delegates at Crimean Platform Summit 2021: during the event, journalists from Crimea distributed a magazine to international government officials, which was devoted to the project and the struggle for the release of political prisoners;
- the #PrisonersVoice VR video won the 2021 Cologne Short Film Festival award.
"#PrisonersVoice is a helping hand and a contribution to end the silence that each of us can make," said Yulia Fediv, Executive Director of UCF from 2018 to 2021, during the project's presentation.