“A hypocrite is the kind of person who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump and make a speech for conservation.” Adlai Stevenson
August 16, 2023, And Every Wednesday
By Linda Case Gibbons, Esq.
This week, 19 more years were added to Alexei Navalny’s already three decades prison sentence.
His trial took place in a penal colony auditorium from which journalists and the public were barred.
You may not recognize the name, but the way Alexei Navalny has been persecuted should ring a bell.
The 47-year-old Navalny is a Russian opposition leader, lawyer and anti-corruption activist, who has opposed President Vladimir Putin for years, and has been persecuted and punished for it.
On July 17, 2013, Navalny registered as a candidate for mayor of Moscow. On July 18 he was sentenced for a five-year prison term for embezzlement and fraud;
In 2021 he was poisoned with Novichok, a military grade nerve agent;
After revealing damaging information about corruption among Kremlin officials, he was sentenced to three decades in prison;
His supporters have been tracked down and arrested;
And this week, six additional counts were added, “inciting extremism, financing extremism, creating an illegal NGO (a non-government organization for political action), the rehabilitation of Nazism and inciting children to dangerous acts.”
Whatever that means.
According to his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh, he is also facing another criminal case on terrorism charges.
Navalny says these actions are “designed to cow the Russian people into political submission.”
As far as Nevalny’s future in prison is concerned, his incarceration is designed to be harsh, conditions that Yarmysh calls “draconian.”
Meeting with visitors will be limited. Writing or receiving letters will be prohibited for years, as will speaking to other inmates. And who knows what else.
“They are going to make it almost impossible for him to communicate with the outside world,” independent journalist, Yevgenia Albats said. “They are trying to silence him. To make him dead for the outside world.”
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, judges have been handing down long prison sentences to anyone who criticizes Putin, or the war, accusing them of being traitors.
Yet, according to Yarmysh, Navalny remains cheerful and optimistic, she says, because he believes in his cause.
“The sentencing number is not for me,” he said, “It’s for you. You, not me, are being frightened and deprived of the will to resist.
“You are being forced to surrender your Russia without a fight to the gang of traitors, thieves and scoundrels who have seized power. Putin must not achieve his goal. Do not lose the will to resist.”
As for his supporters? They see him as a Russian Nelson Mandela.
Our State Department was appalled when reacting to the recent news about Navalny, calling the verdict “an unjust conclusion to an unjust trial.”
The State Department was indignant and shocked, mostly because they knew that nothing like that could ever happen here.
Hold the line, America.
Stay strong, Patriots.