Press release

Brussels - Moscow, October 24, 1997. Alina Vitukhnovskaya, a 24-years old poetess and journalist, member of the Transnational Radical Party, has been imprisoned again yesterday in Moscow. In 1995-1996 she spent already one year in prison under accusation of drug dealing. Federal Security Service (FSB) accuses her in spreading an amount of "unidentified drug substance" for 28 US dollars. Since that time she is under investigation.

Too many things show that the accusations falsified by the FSB as a revenge for Alina's refusal to collaborate and to open her journalist sources. But nevertheless they are still not removed and criminal suite is still not closed. Moreover, the yesterday developments became more than scandalous and look definitely as an attempt of secret service to avenge on Alina Vitukhnovskaya.

Meanwhile, thousands of other young men and women - and not only in Russia but also in other parts of the world - are daily detained, arrested, persecuted for buying a cigarette with hashish, tablets of XTC or other "prohibited" drugs. And the more harsh are measures against drugs and drug users, the more wide are drugs spreading, the more powerful becomes narcomafia.

Earlier this year, the Russian State Duma adopted a new draft law on narcotic substances which establishes again the criminal and administrative responsibility for the use of drugs. This draft law represents an essential regress even in comparison with the currently existing Russian legislation. It has caused already a sharp critics from the side of Russian human rights activists, since it gives abnormal fullpower to the police under pretext of "struggle against drugs". The draft law has not yet been signed by the President of Russian Federation, but there is a danger, it would be soon.

The case of Alina Vitukhnovskaya, thousands of other cases - badly known - throughout Russia show the same sad picture: a new born democracy risks to develop into a police state instead of the State of Law, using the same old alibi: war on drugs. Unfortunately, it is a logical and inevitable sequence of the prohibitionist policy on drugs, wherever it would be, whoever it would realize.

The Transnational Radical Party announces the launch of a worldwide campaign for immediate release of Alina Vitukhnovskaya. At the same time - in collaboration with other Russian antiprohibitionists and human rights activists - we also launch in Russia a campaign aimed at prevention of new, more prohibitionist legislation on drugs.

Transnational Radical Party