Amnesty International strips Kremlin critic Navalny of ‘prisoner of conscience’ status

Amnesty International on Wednesday stripped jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny of the “prisoner of conscience” status over complaints that the anti-corruption campaigner made ‘hate speech and xenophobic remarks’ in the past. A prisoner of conscience (POC) title is designated to an imprisoned individuals for their non-violent expression. Accusing Navalny of anti-migrant provocative statements that he made in the 2000s, the New York-based human rights watchdog said that while it feels that the move was aimed at denouncing the Russian dissident abroad, it was, however, compelled to alter the status. Russia’s state-run press ran headlines Wednesday: ‘Western human-rights activists have changed their view of the blogger’, referring to Navalny, as cited by several reports. 

Amnesty International spokesperson Alexander Artemyev confirmed saying, that the NGO reviewed Navalny’s ‘violent and discriminatory’ hate speeches from 15 years ago and reached the decision. Although, she alleged, that the requests to review the historical speeches of the Kremlin critic somewhat appeared like a ‘smear campaign’, and Amnesty continues to oppose the arrest of Navalny despite removal of POC status as he is being wrongly persecuted for speaking out against President Vladimir Putin’s regime. According to Russia’s RFL, deputy director of Amnesty's Europe and Central Asia office, Denis Krivosheev, in an email response alleged that the decision to strip Navalny’s status was ‘internal’, and it did not differ the agency’s posture demanding his immediate release to end politically motivated persecution.

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According to  Krivosheev, some of the remarks made by Navalny in the speeches during the start of his political career had reached past the ‘advocacy of hatred’. Therefore, the decision against the 44-year-old opposition politician was made by the London-based NGO. His aide Leonid Volkov and Ivan Zhdanov tweeted that Amnesty’s decision was ‘shameful’ and unacceptable.  Navalny was arrested by Russian law enforcement last month following his return from Germany where he recovered from soviet era nerve toxin Novichok’s poisoning. 

EU slaps sanctions

Earlier, European Union foreign ministers agreed to slap sanctions against the Russian officials for Moscow's "unlawful" detention of Navalny, diplomatic sources close to EU officials informed Associated Press agency. 27-nation bloc convened in Brussels on a videoconference meeting presided by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken where the decision of imposing new punitive measures, backed by Germany, Poland, France, and other Baltic states was reached, in order to “convey a message” to the Russian President Vladimir Putin. The list of the sanctioned Russian officials will be finalized by the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell. 

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