Svetlana Alexievich And 270 Other World Leaders Call For Savchenko’s Release

More than 270 prominent Western figures appealed to the European leaders.

The authors of the letter are Nobel laureates, writers, scientists, politicians, public figures, philosophers, artists, who represent at least 20 countries of the world, European Truth writes.

Among the signatories of the appeal with the demand to release Ukrainian pilot Nadezhda Savchenko is Svetlana Alexievich (a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Belarus), Tomas Venclova (poet, Lithuania-the USA), Elfriede Jelinek (a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Austria), Markus Mekel (the former German Foreign Minister), Guy Verhofstadt (the President of the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe in the European parliament, the former Prime Minister of Belgium), Viktor Shenderovich (a writer, Russia), Agnieszka Holland (a film director, Poland), Michael Epstein ( a professor of the Department of Cultural Theory and Russian Literature at Emory University, Atlanta (the USA) and others.

They called on European leaders to “take emergency measures for the immediate and unconditional release of 34-year-old Nadezhda Savchenko, a Ukrainian citizen, kidnapped and placed in jail for 20 months in the Russian Federation” and concluded that “our ability to save her life tests the effectiveness of international diplomacy and our commitment to European values.”

The initiative of collecting signatures for an open letter has been running by a group of Polish and Ukrainian intellectuals, more than 5000 signatures were collected within one day.

Everyone can join the initiative – you can sign an open letter at the address: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/free-savchenko-open-letter-to-european-leaders.

As you know, Nadezhda Savchenko announced a waterless hunger strike on March 3 after the court had not given her to come up with the last word, and rescheduled the hearing for March 9.

With that Savchenko resists to force feeding, however, as lawyers explained, she cannot be allowed to die under the Russian law.

The day before, rallies in her support were held in some Ukrainian and European cities.