Moscow, March 15, 1996

"My release from the prison cell is a big victory. It's a victory of all those who fought for my freedom. And - first of all - it's a victory of those who made public my case: people of mass media, journalists from "Moskovskij Komsomolec" newspaper, from Radio Eho Moskvy and others. It is also victory of judge, Mrs Elena Raskevich, who took a wise and fair decision. It is victory of common sense.

When on January 15 I didn't arrive to the recruitment office for being sent to the army and when I didn't appeal to the court after the enlistment commission's decision to draft me in spite of my requesting alternative civilian service, I have made fully conscientious choice. I faced the threat of my arrest and future criminal case, hoping that my action in the spirit of Gandhi's nonviolence will be able to draw a maximal attention to the problem of a dramatic contradiction between our Criminal Code and our Constitution which guarantees to every citizen the right to refuse military service on reasons of conscience.

In one and a half months, on May 3, when the first trial session on my criminal case will take place, I hope that the trial will have enough common sense and respect to the country's Basic Law in order to justify me because of absence the facts of crime.

However, my problem and similar problems of hundreds of thousands of young Russians could be finally resolved only after passing a democratic law on alternative civilian service: a law, which would give to every young draftee the possibility to choose freely between military and civilian service. I do not believe in the State Duma's ability to pass such a law. That's why we antimilitarists and Radicals define the goal: to prepare and to organize collecting signatures for the all-Russian referendum on the conscientious objection draft bill."

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VADIM HESSE, born in 1977, member of Radical Party and Antimilitarist Radical Association (ARA), one of those adhered to the so called "Statement of Nineteen" about collective conscientious objection. In December 1995 Vadim Hesse refused to be drafted into the army, requesting to grant him alternative civilian service according to the Article 59 Part 3 of Russian Federation's Constitution. On January 25, 1996 he was arrested for "evading the regular draft to the armed forces" (Art. 80 of the Criminal Code). On March 5, after a number of protests organized by the ARA, and publications in Russian and foreign mass media, the measure of prevention against Vadim Hesse was changed to the "non-departure subscription" and he was released from the cell of Noginsk prison, where he spent 40 days.