Crackdown sees more jailed ahead of holiday
As Russians prepare for their own holiday season, the government’s crackdown on political activists and citizens who have voiced their opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine does not appear to be taking a break.
Yesterday, a court in Siberia sentenced a former head of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s local headquarters to nine years in a penal colony. And on Friday, two Russian poets who publicly staged anti-war poetry readings in a central Moscow square were sentenced to seven years and 5½ years in prison respectively.
Alarm bells have also been sounded over the deteriorating health of two other men who are serving long sentences for anti-war statements, with their lawyers saying they are afraid the men could die in prison.
As part of a broadening political crackdown, Russians are handed sentences on increasingly absurd and conflated charges, often under wartime censorship laws such as spreading “fake news” or “discrediting” Russia’s armed forces, as well as “inciting terrorism”.
The number of treason cases was 2½ times higher in 2023 than it was the previous year, with at least 37 such cases, according to First Department, a Russian watchdog.
OVD-Info, another watchdog group, has documented 776 criminal cases brought against citizens for anti-war protests or statements since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Igor Baryshnikov, a 64-year-old antigovernment activist, was sentenced in June to a 7½-year prison term for posting about the fighting in Bucha and Mariupol on Facebook. His lawyer says he is in severe pain and needs surgery.
Former Moscow municipal deputy Alexei Gorinov, 62, who went missing for over two weeks, resurfaced at a prison hospital in Vladimir earlier this week. His lawyers have also sounded the alarm over his health. In 2022, he received seven years in prison for “spreading misinformation” about the Russian army.
The crackdown now appears to be extending to LGBTQI+ groups and anything the government dubs as an expression of LGBTQI+ identity, as President Vladimir Putin has singled them and anti-war activists out as scapegoats.
A raunchy party for Moscow’s elites earlier this month drew the ire of Russian politicians and Christian Orthodox activists, leading to police investigations and a tearful public apology after the partygoers were accused of violating laws prohibiting “gay propaganda”.
One rapper, who attended the party in nothing but a sock, was arrested for 15 days for “hooliganism” and “spreading gay propaganda”. The scandal has highlighted how increasingly anything that deviates from Russia’s conservative patriotism will not be tolerated.
Yesterday, Ksenia Fadeeva, the former head of Navalny’s political headquarters in Tomsk, in Siberia, received a nine-year sentence in a penal colony and was fined 500,000 rubles (NZ$8840), after she was found guilty of organising the activities of an extremist group. Russian authorities designated Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation an extremist group in 2021.
Fadeeva joins a growing list of former Navalny staffers who have been handed long prison sentences for their work, including Lilia Chanysheva from the city of Ufa, who was sentenced to 7½ years, and Vadim Ostanin of Barnaul, who is serving nine years.