Amnesty accused of folding to Kremlin
Amnesty International has stripped Alexei Navalny of his status as a prisoner of conscience after what his spokesman called an ‘‘orchestrated campaign’’ to discredit him over hate speech a decade ago.
The human rights group recognised the Russian opposition leader as a prisoner of conscience last month after his arrest but said it had revised its decision ‘‘in light of new information’’ about comments he made on migrants from Central Asia. It also said that he had urged violence but gave no examples.
Amnesty defines a prisoner of conscience as someone who has not used or advocated violence but is imprisoned because of their political or religious beliefs. Alexander Artemev, a spokesman for Amnesty in Moscow, said that it had taken the decision after being ‘‘bombarded’’ with complaints. ‘‘We had too many requests; we couldn’t ignore them,’’ he told the BBC.
An Amnesty employee, speaking anonymously to Russia’s Mediazona website, suggested that the campaign may have been co-ordinated by ‘‘people in different countries at Russia Today ’’, the Kremlin-funded media outlet.
Navalny began his political career as a member of Yabloko, a liberal party, but became a nationalist activist in the mid2000s. In 2006 he co-founded Narod, a nationalist-democratic movement, and attended the Russian march, an annual rally in Moscow of nationalist and ultra-right groups. He said his actions had been an attempt to encourage a wider debate about mass immigration to Russia from mainly Muslim former Soviet states such as Tajikistan.
Although he condemned farright violence, he caused controversy with a series of online videos called ‘‘Become a Nationalist’’. In one, he compared darkskinned criminals from the north Caucasus region to cockroaches and said that homeowners should be able to use lethal force to defend their homes. ‘‘I recommend a handgun,’’ he said during a video that portrayed him shooting a cloaked attacker who was shouting ‘‘Allahu akbar’’. In another, he said that migrants from Central Asia were causing Russia’s roots to decay. ‘‘There is no need to hit anyone. Everything that disturbs us should be carefully but firmly removed by means of deportation,’’ he said, adding: ‘‘We have the right to be ethnic Russians in Russia. And we will defend that right.’’
He has never apologised for the videos. However, Leonid Volkov, his chief aide, recently told The New Yorker magazine that Navalny regretted the video about migrants but had refused to delete it from YouTube because it was ‘‘a historical fact’’.
His spokeswoman said on Twitter: ‘‘They excluded Navalny from list of prisoners of conscience over statements made in the middle of the noughties at the request of state propagandists. What a total disgrace.’’
Navalny, 44, was held in Moscow on January 17 after returning from Germany where he had been recovering from an attempt to kill him. He was jailed this month for two and a half years on fraud charges that he said were aimed at stifling his opposition to President Vladimir Putin.
Some of the complaints sent to Amnesty cited a Twitter thread by Katya Kazbek, a freelancer using a pseudonym, who has written for Russia Today’s website. She accused Navalny of being an ‘‘avowed racist’’.
Amnesty said that it would not have revoked Navalny’s status had he publicly withdrawn his comments about migrants, which it described as being ‘‘on the threshold of hate speech’’. It said, however, that it was still calling for an end to Navalny’s detention.