The Kremlin is targeting Alexei Navalny’s reputation, as the opposition leader has been sent to a prison colony in Russia, a journey to a “gray zone” where supporters say he will need maximum international support to ensure his safety.
For years, Navalny was a ghost in the Russian state media, his name carefully absent from the lips of senior officials and news anchors. A favorite opposition game was to write your name on a snow bank – city officials often arrived shortly afterwards to sweep it.
But now that he has been sentenced to two and a half years in prison on charges of embezzlement, the Kremlin and its supporters highlighted his role in nationalist politics in the 2000s and used the courts to portray him as an anti-patriot.
In the month since his arrest, he was convicted of slandering a World War II veteran, a crime that did not increase his sentence, but was an unpleasant display on prime-time news programs.
And then, in what some Amnesty International officials described as capitulating to a “coordinated campaign”, the human rights organization stopped describing him as a “prisoner of conscience”, a decision that the allies said would ease the pressure on Russia to release him immediately.
“The key to trying to get it out is to apply maximum pressure internally … but also internationally,” said Vladimir Ashurkov, a close ally of Navalny who called for sanctions against Russian officials and businessmen. “That the status was taken from him so publicly, it naturally damages Alexei’s reputation … and spreads malice and doubt and that is what the perpetrators were trying to achieve.”
Amnesty denies having been pressured to make the decision, saying that “the propaganda of the Russian authorities is recognizable as such”. But figures like Margarita Simonyan, head of the state-funded RT news network, took a victory streak, writing that “our columnist used concrete examples that reminded everyone that he [Navalny] he is a Nazi ”.
The decision came days before Navalny’s transfer from a prison in Moscow to a prison colony somewhere in Russia began, a journey during which he will disappear for days or even weeks before his location is revealed. Russia ignored a decision by the European human rights court to release him because his security could not be guaranteed in a prison.
Amnesty said it would continue to push for Navalny’s release, but supporters say his action has already caused real damage. Some, like Navalny ally Leonid Volkov, said the organization’s leadership was “inadequate”. Others said they would require the organization to return status to Navalny.
“What they’re trying to do is cut international support for him … to create doubts about whether we should support this guy. Is this a good guy? ”Said Jamison Firestone, a lawyer who had previously worked with Sergei Magnitsky, a tax lawyer who died in a Russian prison in 2009, and who pushed for sanctions against Russian authorities.
The question is whether a series of early 2000 videos produced by Navalny opposing migrant workers – as well as his refusal to apologize for them – should minimize the public campaign for his release from prison, which was driven by his corruption investigations. and for leading protests against Vladimir Putin.
Amnesty said its decision was internal and that the focus on it is upsetting the guarantee of Navalny’s release. But in a phone call with a Russian prankster pretending to be Volkov, senior Amnesty officials admitted that the decision “did a lot of damage” and that “we may have done more harm than good at this point”.
Navalny began his long period of transfer to a Russian prison colony on Thursday night in a process called etapirovaniye, where even close relatives can lose control of prisoners for days or weeks.
His lawyer, Vladimir Kobzev, said he did not know where Navalny was being sent.
Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s longtime press secretary, said: “It is always a gray area when no one knows where it is being taken or how long it will take. Neither his relatives, nor his lawyers, and even the prisoners themselves, have any information. It’s hell on its own, but in Alexei’s case, just like being in prison, it’s a threat to his life. “