Re: Dmitry Bogatov arrested in Moscow

[Zlatan Todoric <zlatan@riseup.net>]

On 04/12/2017 02:17 PM, Mehdi Dogguy wrote:
> On 12/04/2017 12:53, martin f krafft wrote:
>> also sprach Jérémy Bobbio <lunar@debian.org> [2017-04-12 12:31 +0200]:
>>> Has anyone been in touch with his lawyer(s)? It would be
>>> worthwhile to know what they think could be useful from Debian.
>>> A public support statement could give wider media exposure, maybe
>>> some international pressure. But we shouldn't do this without an
>>> agreement from Dmitry and his legal counsel. It depends on their
>>> defense strategy.
>> To be honest, I think we should not expose the project here. We
>> don't know the exact accusations and we really ought not just offer
>> to be a witness without being asked.
>>
>> While I personally would like to believe that Dimitri is the good
>> guy and the Russian officials the villains, I have no first-hand
>> information to back this up, and I don't think the project does
>> either.
>>
> I concur.
>
> His arrest is not linked to his Debian activities (or at least, does not
> look like it) and we are not tooled to help him in such complex cases. Paying
> a random lawyer is not going to help him, by looking at how the case started.
> Plus, we do not have accurate information for now. There are other projects
> which are used to help activists around the world (especially for political
> trials). I am thinking about EFF and Amnesty International for example, but
> maybe there are better suited organizations for this case. If specialized
> organizations are unable to help him, I fear Debian on its own will not be
> more useful to him.
>

And I am absolutely opposed to this way of thinking. We as project that
creates technically excellent OS shouldn't rush with any statement but
Debian is not only OS. It is also about people, community and its
philosophy. For technical part, they took away manpower from us.

Now from community perspective - as producers of Debian which is used by
derivates such as Tails and we also ship Tor and so on, we are most
likely already on a lot of worldwide government lists as potential
threat to their dictatorship. So as Jeremy already said, I would also
like to know that Debian would care for me if I get stuck in such
situation. Most of my knowledge comes from Debian, Debian people itself
or Debian people pointing me to resources. With Debian I also grew to
learn more about freedom and what is stake at it and if now we are not
going to use all our knowledge to help our member, well that would be
sad day for Debian community.

We should as community actively engage in this matter - why do we even
produce freedom in digital form if we can't sustain freedom in human
form? He is our member, he shares the very essence ideas with us and it
seems (we need to investigate somehow and not be passive but proactive)
those things are now exactly at the stake here.

Afterall, one of questions in our P&P for becoming a Debian Developer is
situation running/using/modifying software under dictatorship regime -
why do we have these "unreal" questions if we really didn't give
thoughts about it.

So my suggestion is to find out what is really going on and help our own
member, because that is what community does - takes care of each other.
Otherwise, I really had wrong picture all along about our community.

Z

P.S. if there is no interests from others, I at least want to say that I
want to know and help as much as I can so please do write privately to
me if I can do anything at all.

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