Opinion: The last chance to save Alexey Navalny - CNN - 0 views
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Last summer, Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny narrowly survived an assassination attempt, widely believed to have been organized by Russia's security services, through a Novichok nerve-agent poisoning. Now, without concerted action, he may die from medical neglect in a Russian penal colony where the authorities locked him up following a mockery of a trial. The botched nerve-agent attack, since exposed, was supposed to have been accomplished with deniability. If Navlany now dies in prison, the blame will lie unequivocally with the Kremlin.
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It's not hard to see why Russian authorities are now sparing no effort to make Navalny -- and his backers -- believe that political opposition is futile and to make them pay a very high price for their activism. Navalny's support was once said to extend no further than the intelligentsia of Moscow and St. Petersburg, but he eventually built a following across the country. Indeed, it was while he was visiting supporters in distant Siberia that the Federal Security Service (FSB), the KGB's main successor, apparently tried to kill him.
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Russian authorities' imprisonment of Navalny has only boosted his profile. Now from his prison cell, he is highlighting the Kremlin's refusal to give him independent medical care he can trust for what appears to be a combination of an undiagnosed respiratory illness and serious back pain. His three-week hunger strike has brought him to what his doctors say from afar could be the brink of death. One of the doctors said that test results he received from Navalny's family showed sharply elevated levels of potassium, which could lead to cardiac arrest, and signs of kidney failure.
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As Navalny's health rapidly declines behind bars, his supporters' freedom may also be in jeopardy. On Friday, the Moscow prosecutor's office petitioned a court to have three organizations affiliated with him declared "extremist" -- the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), the Foundation for Protection of Citizens Rights, and "Navalny's Headquarters." That could lead to all three groups being outlawed, putting their numerous staff members and backers across the country at great personal risk, including of criminal prosecution. This broader movement needs defending.
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The logic goes: if you are a critic, you must be foreign, and if you're foreign, you're the enemy. The new legislation also codified equating a series of single-person pickets with "mass protests." Under a 2014 law, if you're found guilty more than twice in a 180-day period for "unlawful" protesting, you can go to prison.