2/27/21
At first, it seemed like a bad joke. On Wednesday evening, the journalist Aaron Mate posted on Twitter that Amnesty International (AI) had stripped Alexei Navalny of his status as a prisoner of conscience.
It became more real when RT's Editor Margarita Simonyan put out a triumphant tweet (in Russian), acknowledging that one of her puppet freelancers living in New York was instrumental in convincing AI that "he ( Navalny) is a Nazi." The post ended with congratulations to everyone in uniform on the occasion of the Russian Defenders of Fatherland Day. It was like the tweet read: "Great job, guys! Congratulations on the success of your mission. Perfect timing!" Did Putin pardon Navalny, and that prompted AI to reconsider? No. Was Navalny released from jail by request last week of the European Court of Human Rights? No. In fact, coincidentally, right after the AI decision, Navalny disappeared from the Matroskaya Tishina jail: his lawyers suspect he was transferred to a penal colony, but neither they nor his wife or parents were informed about his whereabouts. Did AI change its mind and now consider the charges brought up against Navalny by the Moscow kangaroo court to be just and valid? No, not that either. In fact, in a statement issued by the organization on Thursday, AI once again acknowledged that "Navalny has been arbitrarily detained for exercising his right to freedom of expression, and for this reason, we continue to campaign for his immediate release."
They say they are continuing to campaign for his release, but in the process they have reviled a person who was poisoned by the state, survived, woke up from an 18-day coma with no memory or ability to control his arms and legs, pulled himself together, flew back home, was detained, sentenced, put in solitary confinement and now shipped like a parcel post to some Godforsaken labor camp, where the inhuman, unjust and punitive Russian prison system will try to kill him again. Hell of a job, Amnesty, congratulations! Putin and his entourage are grateful and won't forget the favor. But despite the claims of AI in its public statement (AI did not respond to my request for an interview), Navalny has said he regrets the words he used in the past and has distanced himself from them. During his campaign for Moscow mayor in 2013 he said he regretted what he said both in print interviews — see, for instance, his responses to Novaya Gazeta's
questions or in videos, like in his most
recent interview with Sergei Guriev. The U.S. publications closely associated with Putin's enablers, i.e., those who promote Putin and his regime in the West, did run a couple of articles denouncing Navalny as a nationalist. They did not get the kind of broad response the authors expected. But AL’s decision did get the response that Putin supporters longed for. It’s a nice try, Lubyanka. You failed to murder Navalny, so now you’re trying to kill his reputation. A futile attempt, I believe.