Oleksandr Kolchenko is one of the best known former Ukrainian political prisoners. Together with Oleh Sentsov, he became the face of the protest movement of Ukrainian citizens in Crimea after Russia annexed the peninsula in 2014. In 2015, Kolchenko was sentenced to 10 years in prison for membership in a “terrorist group”, and joined Oleh Sentsov’s 145-day hunger strike in 2018.
Kolchenko was released as part of a prisoner exchange in September 2019, but according to a coalition of Ukrainian civil society organisations, there are still at least 100 Ukrainian citizens in detention in occupied Crimea or Russia. According to Ukraine’s Parliamentary Commissioner for Human Rights, the rights of the majority of Ukrainian political prisoners are subject to serious violations, including lack of access to medical treatment.
Precisely for this reason, Oleksandr Kolchenko became one of the three Ukrainian former political prisoners invited to take part in a augmented reality project - #PrisonersVoice. This mobile application will feature the voices of former political prisoners, who will talk users through the emotions behind their experiences - from the circumstances of arrest to life in a Russian prison colony.
