Navalny’s mother ‘resisting pressure’ for secret burial
mother of Russia’s top opposition leader Alexei Navalny said she has seen her son’s body and that she is resisting strong pressure by authorities to agree to a secret burial outside the public eye.
Speaking in a video statement from the Arctic city of Salekhard, Lyudmila Navalnaya said investigators have allowed her to see her son’s body in the city morgue.
She said she reaffirmed the demand to give Mr Navalny’s body to her and protested against what she described as authorities trying to force her to agree to a secret burial.
“They are blackmailing me, they are setting conditions where, when and how my son should be buried,” she said. “They want it to do it secretly without a mourning ceremony.”
Mr Navalny’s mother has filed a lawsuit at a court in Salekhard contesting officials’ refusal to release her son’s body.
A closed-door hearing has been scheduled for March 4. On Tuesday, she appealed to Russian president Vladimir Putin to release her son’s remains so that she could bury him with dignity.
Mr Navalny’s death has deprived the Russian opposition of its best-known and most inspiring politician less than a month before an election that is all but certain to give Mr Putin another six years in power.
Many Russians had seen Mr Navalny as a rare hope for political change amid Mr Putin’s unrelenting crackdown on the opposition.
Since Mr Navalny’s death, about 400 people have been detained across in Russia as they tried to pay tribute to him with flowers and candles, according to OVD-INFO, a group that monitors political arrests.
Authorities cordoned off some of the memorials to victims of Soviet repression across the country that were being used as sites to leave makeshift tributes to Mr Navalny. Police removed the flowers at night, but more keep appearing.
Earlier yesterday, impristhe oned opposition figure Vladimir Kara-murza urged Russians not to give up after mr Navalny’s death, and he alleged a state-backed hit squad was taking out the Kremlin’s political opponents, according to a video posted to social media.
A British-russian citizen, Mr Kara-murza is serving a 25-year sentence for treason at a penal colony in the Siberian city of Omsk.
His comments came as he appeared via a video link in a court hearing over a complaint against Russia’s Investigative Committee for what he believes were two poisoning attempts against him. He alleges the committee did not properly investigate the attempts.
Mr Kara-murza is one of several opposition figures who have either been imprisoned, forced to flee the country or killed. He was convicted of criticising Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and was handed a stiff sentence as part of a crackdown against critics of the war and freedom of speech.
“We owe it… to our fallen comrades to continue to work with even greater strength and achieve what they lived and died for,” Mr Kara-murza said.
We owe it… to our fallen comrades to achieve what they lived and died for Vladimir Kara-murza, pictured