Photo Credit: RFE/RL
By: Tom Balmforth, RFE/RL, July 8, 2016
Russian protest artist Pyotr Pavlensky has accused the organizers of the Vaclav Havel International Prize for Creative Dissent of essentially “acknowledging their support for police terror” by withdrawing the award after he pledged to devote the $42,000 in prize money to the legal defense of convicted police killers in Russia’s Far East. “They have signed their support of state terror over society,” the 32-year-old critic of Russia’s political establishment told RFE/RL on July 8, after confirming that the New York-based Human Rights Foundation (HRF) had informed him it was rescinding his prize.