Boycott ICM 2022 in Russia

This page was created for mathematicians to protest against hosting the International Congress of Mathematicians in 2022 by Russia. Saint Petersburg was chosen as the next ICM venue at the 2018 General Assembly of the International Mathematical Union in São Paulo.

Here are some of the reasons to boycott:

1. Political prisoners [wiki]

   In recent years the number of human rights defenders, journalists and scientists in Russian prisons and penal colonies has risen sharply. As for September 2018, the Russian human rights centre Memorial reports there are at least 188 political prisoners or prisoners of conscience. In the Russian Federation political prisoners are often subjected to abuse or torture.

   The international mathematical community is gravely concerned about the situation of Azat Miftakhov, a mathematics graduate student at the Moscow State University. Azat was a target of a brutal smear campaign in the pro-government media and spent almost two years in pre-trial detention. On January 18, 2021 he was sentenced to six years imprisonment in a penal colony. We've been monitoring Azat's case and we believe that the charges against him are a pure invention of the Russian authorities. Before the verdict was announced, 47 mathematicians wrote a letter to the Executive Organizing Committee and Local Organizing Committee of the International Congress of Mathematicians, asking them to take an active position on Azat's case and to communicate with the state authorities to free him. Unfortunately, the ICM organizers decided not to act in his support.

2. Repression of opponents [wiki]

   The most widely known critics of Putin's regime who have been assassinated include the journalist and human rights activist Anna Politkovskaya, liberal politician Sergei Yushenkov, human rights activist Natalya Estemirova, journalist and anti-fascist Anastasia Baburova, human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov, American journalist and chief editor of the Russian edition of Forbes Paul Klebnikov, physicist and liberal politician Boris Nemtsov. To touch the topic of mathematical sciences, the famous inventor of knot invariants Victor Vassiliev was arrested in 2014 during a peaceful protest in support of the defendants in the Bolotnaya Square Case. At the time when this page was created police crushed a peaceful protest and over 400 people were detained in Saint Petersburg. In January-February 2021 thousands were arrested during peaceful protests against jailing the opposition leader Alexey Navalny. Among them there were many math students and faculty, including professor Alexander Kuznetsov, an EMS Prize recipient and an invited speaker at the International Mathematical Congress in Seoul in 2014.

3. Discrimination of LGBT people [wiki]

   In 2013 Russia adopted a federal law which de facto criminalizes LGBT culture. This resulted in numerous arrests of Russian LGBT citizens publicly opposing the law and there has reportedly been a surge of homophobic propaganda, violence and hate crimes using the law as justification. The respective law was adopted in March of 2012 by the governor of St. Petersburg Georgy Poltavchenko, who was a co-chair of the Executive Organizing Committee for the ICM 2022 in 2018-2019.

   United Nations Human Rights Council condemns the wave of torture and killings of gay men in Chechnya in 2017. In May 2019 the Human Rights Watch reported a new anti-gay crackdown in Grozny. In July 2019 a prominent human rights, and LGBT rights activist Yelena Grigoryeva was murdered in Saint Petersburg.

4. Annexation of Crimea [wiki] and ongoing war in Ukraine [wiki]

   In February-March 2014 Russian military troops invaded and annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine. The United Nations General Assembly condemns the annexation and calls upon all states and international organizations not to recognize or to imply the recognition of Crimea as Russian territory. Another resolution of UN documents that Russia systematically curtails civil, political and cultural rights of Crimean Tatars. In July 2019 more than 20 Crimean Tatar activists faced unfounded terrorism charges.

   International organizations recognize Russian presence in the military conflict in the East of Ukraine. The war started in 2014 after the annexation of Crimea. It has already taken more than 10,000 lives, wounded over 25,000 and made more than 2,000,000 people to flee their homes. Russian military supplied and subsequently recovered the missile launcher that shot down a scheduled passenger flight MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on 17 July 2014, killing 298 people.

5. Air strikes in Syria [wiki]

   In 2015 Russia joined the Syrian civil war in support of the president Bashar al-Assad, whose army uses against its population such internationally condemned methods as barrel bombs and chemical strikes. Between April and August 2018, Russia conducted at least 13,000 air strikes. As for September 2018, the UK-based Syrian Network for Human Rights reports over 6,000 civilians killed by the Russian Forces, while the total death toll reaches over 200,000.

The aim of the boycott is not to penalize Russian mathematicians for the actions of Russian government or prevent their collaboration with the colleagues abroad. The Congress is co-organized and financed by the Russian government. We believe that by recognizing the Congress in Russia, the mathematical community indirectly lends credibility to Putin's regime.