Grigory Melkonyants' last plea

Your Honour, distinguished members of the court, dear friends!

Today is a joyful day for me. Our trial has come to an end, and the verdict is about to be handed down. It has been an exciting experience. I listened to the wonderful, sometimes emotional words of the people who testified as witnesses, read heartfelt letters and received amazing postcards. At times, it felt like a real celebration, as if I were the one being honoured, not tried.

Twenty-one months ago, on 17 August 2023, a new exciting stage in my life began. Since then, I have seen a search, arrest, detention, three remand centres, 12 cells, more than 100 cellmates, and 26 court hearings. I cherish this experience very much, because it has come at a high price. But most importantly, it gave me the opportunity to reflect on my path and learn a lot about the world, which I had not paid enough attention to before.

I saw how prison destroys people's lives, depriving them of joy and, therefore, happiness. Because the joy of life is the true happiness.

Do not be surprised by this word, ‘joy’. It would seem that what is there to be happy about in my situation, in the darkness of prison, when you don't see your family, friends or colleagues for months on end? It is the joy of knowing that, by going through this ordeal, I have become stronger and have not lost faith in the cause to which I have dedicated my entire life.

Here, in prison, I have met many people whom I would probably never have met in normal life – people with different life experiences, different levels of education and convicted of a wide variety of offences. Every day, we have to agree on how to live together: how to organise shifts in the cell, whether to air it out or not, where to get a fridge or a kettle. In essence, we constantly hold small referenda and reach consensus.

In prison, it helps me a lot that I am an optimist, always looking for the bright side of any situation and seeking to support people. In this, I am similar to the heroine of a novel, the orphan girl Pollyanna. Pollyanna's father, a priest, taught her to play the ‘happiness game’ — to find something to be happy about in everything and look for reasons to be optimistic — and since then she has taught this game to everyone around her. This is not about denying problems, but looking for ways to solve them and learn from them.

Try playing ‘the happy game’ yourself, because if you think about it, each of us has only the present moment that we are living, and there is no other time when life is not ‘this moment.’ And it doesn't matter where you are at this moment: at home or abroad, on holiday or at work, in your flat or in a traffic jam, at the polling station or in a prison cell — you need to live this very moment with joy and positivity. Only the present exists, which is why it is called ‘the present.’ (Russian for the present is ‘real’ - translator’s note). 

That is why my time in prison was very fruitful for me, both as a person and as a lawyer. I became more creative: I started drawing, making collages and crafts, and writing poetry. I gained a new perspective on people, relationships and processes.

I became better at enjoying the flow of life itself, work, creativity, and intellectual freedom. After all, you can lock a person up, but you cannot lock up, stop, or take away their thoughts. You cannot take away or undo my entire journey and what was and remains my world. Perhaps some people find it boring, but the society we all dream of is only possible through fair laws and clear, meaningful procedures. I think about this all the time, and I am sure I am not alone. We are united by an unwavering desire to think, to comprehend about what will make the world a better place, and the will to make our own small contribution.

But let's look at joy from the other side. Is it possible to experience real joy from deception, falsification, or the persecution of an innocent person? What joy can there be in working on my case? A case that should have fallen apart at the pre-investigation stage. A case that they didn't want to pursue, passing it from one agency to another. A case that is not based on evidence, but on assumptions and the ignorance of investigators about the basics of civil, administrative and criminal law. A case in which eight investigators have been replaced. It is this injustice of persecuting an innocent person that sucks the joy out of those who are stuck in this case.

But I bear no ill will towards anyone. The ability to forgive and let go of the bad, even in situations where you think you cannot, makes forgiveness a happy moment in life.

Honourable Court!

The investigators have constructed a unique situation. For the first time in the history of our country, they want to make the meeting room of the Central Election Commission of Russia the scene of a crime and declare the expert who spoke there a criminal.

As a lawyer, I do not understand why I am here and why I am being prosecuted in this case. Most importantly, I do not understand why it is up to me to prove my innocence, rather than the investigation proving my guilt, as required by Article 49 of the Russian Constitution. There is no crime in this case. However, I am forced to prove the opposite: that the Golos movement is not a branch of the international organisation ENEMO, whose activities are recognised as undesirable in Russia; and to prove that I did not organise ENEMO's activities by speaking at a round table at the Central Election Commission.

In the end, state authorities and stubborn facts helped prove my innocence. The first negative response from the Russian Ministry of Justice indicates that ENEMO has no branches in our country. The second response from the Russian Ministry of Justice indicates that the activities of the Golos movement were not recognised as undesirable. Furthermore, no judgments or other decisions were made to ban or restrict the activities of the Golos movement. Finally, the fact that ENEMO and the Golos movement are two different organisations is confirmed by the decisions of the authorised state authorities, which included them in two different registers. ENEMO is on the list of organisations whose activities are recognised as undesirable, while the Golos movement is in the register of so-called ‘foreign agents’.

It turns out that the entire case is based on unsubstantiated and unreliable information from operational officers, which has no probative value, and on the subsequent fabrication of conclusions that distort the content of the documents attached to the case.

This is where the constitutional guarantee should come into play, according to which irreconcilable doubts about a person's guilt are interpreted in favour of the accused, which should inevitably lead to an acquittal. Today, such verdicts account for only 0.26% of all verdicts in the country. But this means that they are possible, and that when passing a sentence, the court is not always guided by the rule that guilt is beyond doubt.

Friends!

As a citizen of Russia, I love my country and cherish my constitutional rights and freedoms. I am sincerely grateful to our ancestors for these achievements. Today, rights and freedoms may seem ordinary, but they are perceived very differently in prison, where you realise how little it is to win them with blood and sweat, and how they must be constantly defended and upheld.

That is why I was so pleased to work on proposals on how to exercise electoral rights in pre-trial detention centres. For example, how can a prisoner in solitary confinement sign a petition in support of a candidate, make a donation to an election fund, obtain campaign materials from election participants, correctly verify the identity of a prisoner when receiving a ballot, ensure extraterritorial voting, and effectively conduct observation. All of this is very important, as a person in a pre-trial detention centre retains all of their electoral rights until they are sentenced to imprisonment. This is often forgotten. During these months of activated observation and reflection, I have managed to find many good solutions.

I cannot know how long my imprisonment will last, but I am confident that sooner or later I will be released and reunited with my loved ones and friends. This anticipation fills my heart with joy. I am happy that, even in prison, I can talk to my mother on the phone, send letters to good people, meet with my defenders and do the work I love and believe in.

Of course, I am very concerned about the fate of the Golos movement, to which I have devoted 12 years of my life, and I cannot know what will happen to it after the verdict is handed down. But I do know that over the years, hundreds of thousands of educated and honest people have become observers. These thousands of my fellow citizens have not wasted their time while I have been locked up. They have continued to defend electoral rights and observe elections with enormous benefit to our country, and during this time, almost 9,000 election campaigns have taken place in Russia. This is a unique experience of citizen self-organisation and an inspiring example of civic engagement. I am delighted to be a part of this community.

There are those who doubt whether fair elections are possible. They doubt whether it is worth participating in them. These are valid questions. In moments of doubt, we must not forget that people are not perfect, and therefore elections are not perfect either. Elections reveal all the human vices that we struggle with throughout our lives. Every day, each of us makes choices between kindness and malice, love and hate, loyalty and betrayal, strength and weakness, generosity and greed, truth and lies, optimism and apathy, humility and pride, sincerity and selfishness, joy and despondency, engagement and indifference.

Making the right choice, and raising the level of honesty and common sense is our way. Without us, elections cannot be fair. People make them fair. Happy people. Observe, participate, enjoy life more — raise the level of honesty and common sense — drop by drop, step by step, day by day.

Thank you for listening to me so patiently. Finally, I would like to thank my loved ones, my defenders, my colleagues, and the many good people who support me and do not allow me to be left alone with injustice. For me, this means that what I have done is important and necessary for people, and that it was not in vain.

Thank you!