Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Kara-Murza are perhaps the best known, who, like Navalny, are “both politicians from the anti-Putin camp and both were sentenced to long prison terms,” says Russia expert Hubert Smeets.
Opposition
Yashin is the former head of an opposition party. He was sentenced to 8.5 years in prison in December 2022 for statements he made on his YouTube channel about the massacre that Russia carried out in Butcha, Ukraine.
Kara-Moerza was a journalist and is now an opposition politician. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison almost a year ago, including for treason. He spoke out against the war in Ukraine and lobbied for Western sanctions against Moscow. He previously survived two poisoning attempts in 2015 and 2017, and has since suffered from a nerve disorder.
Switch off
Kara-Moerza was transferred last month to another Siberian penal colony and placed in solitary confinement for four months. That happened in a notorious EPKT cell: a kind of prison within a prison.
“They have both been politically imprisoned out of the fear that they will simply gain ‘too much’ support,” says correspondent Olaf Koens. Although, according to him, they are not fully comparable to Navalny: “They are less popular in Russia and do not have such a large following.”
Smeets agrees. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean they are in less danger,” he says. “They are stuck because they have turned against Putin and it has been decided to eliminate anyone who poses a threat. They are not picky about that,” says the Russia expert. “In fact, everyone is at risk.”
Punishment camps
Navalny is not the only Russian prisoner to die under suspicious circumstances. For example, Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky died in 2009 after a year in prison, during which he said he was mistreated and denied medical care. The lawyer had previously revealed a massive tax fraud.
These prison camps have ‘a kind of general danger and those are the conditions there’, says Koens. “You have to work all day, you don’t sleep well, it’s cold. It’s a form of torture.” Smeets: “Russian prison camps are also hotbeds of infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis.”
“And they are often far away from family. For example, Navalny was in a prison camp 3,000 kilometers from Moscow. That is approximately the distance between Amsterdam and Athens. A deliberate attempt to make it difficult for people to visit, or not, for example, can call.”
Historian
In addition to political figures, there are also people outside Russia who have been imprisoned on strange grounds. For example, Smeets points to historian Yuri Dmitriev. He worked with the prominent human rights organization Memorial, which documents Soviet-era repression.
Dmitriev found a Soviet-era mass grave with thousands of bodies in western Russia. In court in 2020, he was found guilty of sexually abusing his adopted daughter. Nonsense, according to his supporters: it would be retaliation for exposing Stalin’s crimes.
Dmitriev was initially sentenced to 3.5 years and was set to be released in November 2020, but the court added 10 years to that sentence a few weeks before that release.
Journalist
And then there are also foreigners stuck in Russia, such as American journalist Evan Gershkovich. “He is not in a penal colony, but in what we would call a detention center,” says Smeets. “And that’s not a party either.” He is accused of attempting to obtain defense secrets and has been in pre-trial detention since March 2023.
“It is clear that he was arrested for international political reasons. The suspicion is that he was arrested as a kind of exchange object. This makes him more of a hostage,” said Smeets.
In an interview with the American Tucker Carlson, Putin hinted at a possible prisoner exchange with Gershkovich, but that is no guarantee, Koens emphasizes: “That can only be celebrated when the time comes, and even then the flag cannot actually be taken out: he has been in custody for almost a year.”
Team van Navalny
Finally, several of Navalny’s associates and lawyers are also in custody. “That is completely worrying,” says Koens: “Navalny’s death was a signal. If your boss is murdered, I would also be worried.” Smeets also finds it worrying: “The fact that as a lawyer for a ‘terrorist’ you can also be regarded as a ‘terrorist’ is serious.”
2024-02-21 06:58:59
#stuck #Russia #people #risk
