Alexey Pichugin and Other Political Prisoners Lose Important Voice Advocating on Their Behalf
December 13, 2018
At a ceremony held in Moscow earlier this week Russian journalists and activists, as well as Russian and foreign dignitaries paid tribute to human rights veteran Lyudmila Alexeyeva, who passed away at a Moscow hospital on December 8.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty summarized her tireless work on behalf of Russia’s repressed:
“Alekseyeva became a human rights advocate in the 1960s in the Soviet Union, went into exile, and returned to continue her work in Russia following the collapse of the U.S.S.R.
She co-founded the human rights organization Moscow Helsinki Group in 1976. Within a year, its members were arrested or forced into exile.
Alekseyeva fled to the United States with her family in 1977, where she continued advocating for human rights and took up freelance work for RFE/RL and Voice of America, until her return to Russia in 1993.
There, she returned to being a leading figure of the human rights movement, denouncing rights abuses under former President Boris Yeltsin.
Most recently, her target had been the soft authoritarian regime introduced by Putin and his ruling party, United Russia.”
Also in attendance at the ceremony was Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Alexeyeva had frequently criticized, however many feel that his presence was an empty gesture. Russian liberal politician Grigory Yavlinsky took to Facebook and wrote:
“If he were sincere, the president would amnesty all political prisoners — [imprisoned Ukrainian film director Oleh] Sentsov and others. That would be a genuine tribute. This is just words and gestures.”
Alexeyeva will be remembered as a force to be reckoned with. Tweeted Kenneth Roth, executive director at the New York-based Human Rights Watch:
“We have lost a giant among human rights defenders–a courageous, principled defender of the rights of all Russians from the dark Soviet days to the increasingly dark Putin days.”
For decades, Alexeyeva gave a voice to the “nameless,” as Irvin Cotler, former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada and founder and chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, called “those arrested by tyrannies around the world who remain imprisoned based on their fidelity to conscience.”
With that voice gone, it will be all the more up to the international community and the media to speak up on behalf of Alexey Pichugin and other political prisoners in Russia, because, as Cotler said: “if the media doesn’t report on these cases, it is as if it is not there then, it is as if it never happened.”
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