Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky is set to go on trial in England Monday after being charged with possession of child pornography.
Bukovsky, 73, has spent the majority of his life fighting the Russian regime—in labor camps, in prisons, amid deportation, and on hunger strikes. His most recent plight began after he served as a witness in the case of his friend Alexander Litvinenko, who was poisoned by the Russian government in London in 2006. Bukovsky appeared on an alleged FSB [Russian security service] hit list that same year, alongside Litvinenko, businessman Boris Berezovsky (found dead in 2013), and two others.
Soon after his March 2015 testimony, England’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced 11 counts against Bukovsky in a press release, including “making and possessing … indecent images of children.” The release fueled a flurry of Russian reports accusing Bukovsky of pedophilia. He countered with a libel suit against the CPS that summer.
“Frankly, I don’t care about the risk of being sent to prison. I have already spent 12 years in Soviet prisons having committed no crime in my life, I don’t expect to live for very long, and it makes little difference to me whether I spend the final few weeks of my life in jail,” Bukovsky stated in his writ. “However, what is fundamentally important to me is defending my reputation.”
That April, when the CPS postponed the libel hearing until after Bukovsky’s criminal trial, the long-time dissident went on a hunger strike, despite suffering from heart disease. The strike lasted for weeks, until the CPS moved Bukovsky’s criminal trial date to December 12, after the libel case.
British authorities discovered roughly 20,000 images on Bukovsky’s computer in 2014. Bukovsky and his friends say that the Kremlin planted the images and used Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency, to tip off the authorities.
In the run up to his trial, those familiar with the inner-workings of the Kremlin have defended Bukovsky.
“I believe Vladimir Bukovsky was framed … for his powerful testimony in the hearing into my husband’s death, which concluded that Aleksandr’s murder was perpetrated by the Russian state,” Marina Litvinenko, Alexander’s widow, said in a statement.
Human rights advocates have also spoken out on behalf of Bukovsky.
“It’s important not to lose track of this case, or, especially, to shy away from it because the charges are so distasteful, because that is exactly what Bukovsky’s persecutors are hoping for,” said Garry Kasparov, chairman of the Human Rights Foundation’s International Council. “Smear campaigns against regime critics are nothing new, and this one is on British soil against a man as courageous as Vladimir Bukovsky, a former political prisoner in the USSR and a leading critic of Vladimir Putin.”
Bukovsky famously delivered 150 pages of Soviet psychiatric records to the West in 1971 that revealed the horrific use of mental institutions to eliminate opposition.
Since moving to England, Bukovsky has continued to criticize the regime. To him, little has changed in the past six decades.
“The KGB didn’t change at all. It’s the same KGB, only renamed,” Bukovsky said last spring, nine days into his hunger strike. “I happen to be their enemy for 57 years.”
