Amnesty faces outcry after revoking Navalny’s status

Human rights group strips Kremlin critic of ‘prisoner of conscience’ designation due to ‘hate speech’ videos

AMNESTY International has been accused of “siding with tyrants” and buckling under a Kremlin-backed disinformation campaign after it revoked the prisoner-of-conscience status of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition figurehead.

The global rights organisation said Mr Navalny, who was jailed last week after surviving an assassination attempt apparently orchestrated by the Russian security services, did not deserve the designation because of comments he made 15 years ago about immigration.

In a move that drew immediate condemnation from fellow human rights activists and appeared to catch the group’s own Russian office by surprise, Amnesty said it had taken an “internal decision to stop referring to [Navalny] as a prisoner of conscience in relation to comments he made in the past”.

“Some of these comments, which Navalny has not publicly denounced, reach the threshold of advocacy of hatred, and this is at odds with Amnesty’s definition of a prisoner of conscience,” Denis Krivosheev, the deputy director of Amnesty’s Europe and Central Asia office, said in a statement. He appeared to be referring to two videos

Mr Navalny produced in 2007, when he was entering national politics.

One is an argument for gun rights in which he advocates carrying a pistol for self-defence against Islamist terrorists, who he compares to “cockroaches”.

In the second he argues that only by deporting immigrants could Russia prevent inter-ethnic conflict and the rise of the far-right.

Tom Tugendhat, the chairman of Britain’s foreign affairs select committee, said: “If Amnesty will only call out the persecution of saints, they’re siding with tyrants. The prisons will be full and they will stay silent as ordinary, flawed human beings are persecuted for crimes of conscience.”

Sergei Davidis, an advocate for political prisoners at Memorial, a Russian rights group, said: “It is not a thoughtful decision. Objectively, it hurts both Navalny’s and Amnesty’s reputation.”

Amnesty recognised Mr Navalny as a prisoner of conscience on of Jan 17, when he was arrested after returning to Russia for the first time since he was poisoned with a nerve agent in August.

Alexander Artemyev, Amnesty’s media manager in Moscow, said the group had come under pressure from a sudden wave of enquiries about the videos that appeared to be a “targeted and coordinated campaign to discredit Alexei Navalny abroad”.

Mr Navalny’s allies said Amnesty appeared to be the victim of a misinformation campaign. Vladimir Ashurkov, the executive director of Mr Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation, said: “We will be working with Amnesty … to persuade them to reverse their decision.”