Novaya Gazeta, 26.10.2020

Photo: by dimaberkut / depositphotos

The public activity that has manifested itself in the recent days in protecting Alexei Navalny from political persecution is very high. I would like to hope that this will lead to an increase in public activity in defending other political prisoners, and there are hundreds of them in Russia. “We came out not for Alexei Navalny, we came out for ourselves,” many protesters of 23 January said. There is no reason to doubt their sincerity. When we go out to defend other political prisoners, we also go out for ourselves. Because the repressive machine of the Stalinist type created in Russia – with the “state bodies that do not make mistakes” [in their reprisals, according to Joseph Stalin’s phrase] – can pull almost anyone into its mechanism at any moment. Therefore, the freedom of all Russian political prisoners (to quote a very clear statement by Grigory Yavlinsky) is our freedom. The demand for their release must be repeated every day. And the old slogan “For your and our freedom” is as relevant today as ever.

Why have been political reprisals intensifying in Russia?

On the one hand, because

the authorities consider them to be the only answer to resistance to their policies and plans. Are you dissatisfied? Then we will press, grab and not let go, without giving in or being soft…

On the other hand, because the majority of society is indifferent to this topic.

Rallies and pickets in defence of political prisoners and against political repression attract and interest not very many people (I can reasonably say this – as a person who have been repeatedly organising and taking part in such actions).

The mass media are seriously interested in this, as a rule, only if the repressions concern famous persons, or are mass-scale, or too cruel. If the repressed are not very well-known, or the repressions are not very widespread, then this is not a proper “newsbreak”. Why the interest is not big is not difficult to understand. The majority of citizens either believe that nothing threatens a law-abiding person, or are indifferent to the topic, because they personally or their friends and next of kin were not affected by the reprisals.

This is a fundamental mistake.

Because, as already mentioned, everything can drastically change at any moment.

At any moment, as soon as the “state bodies” want to report on the successful fight against terrorism or extremism, the captains to become majors, and the colonels to turn into generals, your children may become victims of the same provocation as in the New Greatness case [when teenagers and young people discussing politics were charged under trumped up evidence with creation of a terrorist organisation and imprisoned], or be subjected to the same tortures, as [the young people] in the Network case (an organisation banned in Russia).

They will fabricate a case against them, arrest and start torturing them, knocking out the necessary evidence. Children (and their parents) will rush to complain – but the public prosecutor’s office “will not find” evidence of torture, and will announce the traces from an electric shocker as the results of insect bites. If the arrested get sick, they will be denied medical aid and the necessary medicines, being declared completely healthy. And the best lawyer will be helpless, because the judge will habitually literally copy the indictment into the verdict…

At any moment, when they need to expose the “traitors to the Motherland”, anyone who has never even been admitted to state secrets (like [journalist] Ivan Safronov) can be arrested and kept behind bars for many months, without even explaining in what way the “treason” or “disclosure of state secrets” might have taken place…

At any moment, if you are a thorn in the flesh for the “state bodies”, [historian] like Yury Dmitriyev, who wildly annoys them with the fact that he does not get tired of publicisng the names of Stalin’s executioners (whose heirs they consider themselves to be) and the names of victims of their crimes, you can be falsely accused of shameful acts. And the “examinations” ordered from specially trained on-call experts will confirm your “guilt”. And you will be sent to jail for years – and then to a penal colony for a long time…

There may be many other options as well.

For example, when you come out of a metro station (as it was in St. Petersburg on 23 January), you immediately find yourself in a police van, as allegedly a participant in an “unauthorised action”. Although you were not going to go anywhere, you were just going your own way.

After that, you will be driven around the city for several hours, and then brought to the police station and kept there for hours (or even days). And they will not admit the defender you found. You will be taken to court, where your excuses will be regarded as “an attempt to avoid the responsibility established by law” and you will be refused to call witnesses. Or they will say that their testimony is not credible, unlike the testimony of the police, whom the court trusts unquestioningly. And you will receive a large fine, and even arrest for 10-15 days – all this being completely innocent.

It may be that you will go out into the streets, like participants in the Moscow protests [against non-registration of opposition candidates and fraud in the Moscow City Duma election] of 2019, demanding that those candidates to parliament, for whom you signed, be allowed to participate in the elections – and you will see how armour-clad law enforcement officers are beating defenceless people. You try to intercede, or throw a plastic cup at the “guardsman” – and you are sent to jail for several years …

That is why it is necessary to fight for the release of all political prisoners.

Fight for stopping the work of a monstrous police-repressive machine that protects the authorities from citizens.

Fight not only for those who are inorisoned, but also for yourself.

I never tire of saying: don’t ask for whom the bell of political repression tolls.

At any moment it may toll for thee.

And then it will be too late to protest.

Source in Novaya Gazeta

BORIS VISHNEVSKY

is Deputy Chairman of the Yabloko Party, member of the Yabloko Federal Political Committee and  Bureau. Leader of the Yabloko faction in the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg