A Litigation Article from All-Creatures.org

Vegan Activist Maxim Plokhoi Sentenced to 13 Years in Prison

From NAALPO North American Animal Liberation Press Office
September 2022

Maxim: “An act is considered right if its goal is to improve the lives of the largest number of not only people but all living beings on Earth. The purpose and motive of my action is the demand for justice. It was not a terrorist attack. It was a performance protest against the terrorism of people over Living Nature. It was a protest against the injustice of the system of power."

September 29, 2022: The prosecutor asked for 15 years. Maxim replied him with a poster: “Pilate, you are wrong.” When the sentence was announced, Maxim said: “Don’t put the truth in jail. Long live the Anti-System! Legal terrorists, have your prison soap to wash your life from blood and lies. Killing people begins with killing animals.” And he threw the soap that he was given in prison to the hall. He was sentenced to 13 years. (See more information on Maxim here.)

Maxim Plokhoi’s speech in court (his last word):

“An act is considered right if its goal is to improve the lives of the largest number of not only people but all living beings on Earth. The purpose and motive of my action is the demand for justice.

It was not a terrorist attack. It was a performance protest against the terrorism of people over Living Nature. It was a protest against the injustice of the system of power.

The fact that I had served 15 years in prison looks like petty hooliganism in comparison with the banditry of officials, politicians and oligarchs. There is no justice, because not everyone is equal before the law. Each oligarch from my list of demands has stolen more than all those who today are behind bars combined.

What my hostages have endured cannot be compared to what billions of animals are going through every day, every minute; whom we are mercilessly torturing and waning.

What 13 people have experienced cannot be compared with the injustice suffered by millions of people who are hostages of the system of power.

 I stood up for those who cannot, do not know how to protect themselves.
Sleep of conscience, loss of consciousness are too strong to overcome this by “legal” means. The evil of violence against Living Nature is so accepted and normalized that it is impossible to effectively resist it with a peaceful protest. Force hears only force.

Animal advocate Barry Horn said: “The souls of the cruelly tortured cry out for justice, while the living cry out for freedom. It is in our power to restore justice and in our power to grant them this freedom. The animals have no one but us and we will not deceive their expectations.”

Barry Horn died in an American prison during a hunger strike in protest against animal experiments.

Contempt… great contempt is what I feel for the order of life of society, for its morality of positive right – the “right” to murder, contempt for monetary slavery, self-deception and cowardice before the Truth.

I despise your trial and your sentence.

You are not judging me, you are judging yourself, I am your guilty conscience.

I am happy because I realized the truth – our love will be a hypocritical lie until we spread it to all living beings of the Earth. Our justice will be self-deception until we realize that killing a person begins with killing an animal. The system is everything that makes life fake. The system is the impossibility of THOU SHALL NOT KILL.

I am happy because I am an Anti-system.

You have declared war on Nature, I have accepted the challenge.

Watch the film “Earthlings”

Release the hostages!

Don’t be hostages of the system!”

Background:

Maxim is alleged to have taken 13 hostages on a bus in Ukraine in late 2020, releasing them unharmed when the country’s president recommended publicly that everyone watch the film Earthlings, which depicts the suffering of animals that are eaten routinely by humans.

Maxim is charged with cases under 7 articles: hostage-taking with the aim of inducing authorities to certain actions, terrorism, illegal possession and handling of weapons and explosives, attempted murder of police officers (7 police victims and also one general and the regional department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs), these are 4 severe charges and 3 milder.

Ukranian President Zelensky did recommend watching the film Earthlings.

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