Liberals outraged as Putin uses courts for political reprisals
LI News,July 18, 2013
Liberals expressed outrage at the arbitrary and politically motivated sentencing of prominent Russian dissident and blogger, Alexei Navalny, and Peter Ofitserov of Yabloko (LI Full Member). LI Vice-President on the Bureau and German Human Rights Commissioner, Markus Löning, condemned the judgment as “very disturbing” and said that it would only serve to “isolate Russia further from Europe”.
Yabloko party chairman, Sergei Mitorkhin, said: “The Russian government has once again demonstrated that it considers the courts to be a tool for political reprisals against its opponents”. He added that he expected the regional court to “objectively consider an appeal” by Navalny’s lawyers, “which will spare further damage to the reputation of the whole system of justice in Russia”.
Grigory Yavlinski, laureate of the LI Prize for Freedom, commented: “We will be by all means seeking justice for Alexei Navalny and Peter Ofitserov. A severe sentence to Navalny and Ofitserov is provocative and dangerous political signal. The country is pushed towards political chaos and absurdity. The political system functioning according to the principle “you die today, and I will die tomorrow” is not sustainable. The only way to save Russia as a state is returning the country to the legal terrain.”
As the rule of law continues its slow decline in Russia under the authoritarian rule of Vladimir Putin, Liberal International is reminded of the murder of prominent and courageous human right’s activist Natalya Estemirova in 2009, widely believed to have been executed for exposing the corruption and abuses of Chechnyan President Ramzan Kadyrov, a close ally of Putin.
Natalya was nominated by the ALDE Group (LI Full Member) for Liberal International’s Prize for Freedom in 2005. Her fellow activist and employer Oleg Orlov, winner of the Sakharov Prize for Human Rights in 2009, had charges brought against him that year for implicating President Kadyrov in her death, a move that was also condemned by Yabloko in the strongest language.
Posted: July 18th, 2013 under YABLOKO and the International Liberal Family.