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Este blog trata basicamente de ideias, se possível inteligentes, para pessoas inteligentes. Ele também se ocupa de ideias aplicadas à política, em especial à política econômica. Ele constitui uma tentativa de manter um pensamento crítico e independente sobre livros, sobre questões culturais em geral, focando numa discussão bem informada sobre temas de relações internacionais e de política externa do Brasil. Para meus livros e ensaios ver o website: www.pralmeida.org. Para a maior parte de meus textos, ver minha página na plataforma Academia.edu, link: https://itamaraty.academia.edu/PauloRobertodeAlmeida.

quinta-feira, 28 de julho de 2022

Russia locked up Vladimir Kara-Murza for telling the truth about Ukraine - Christian Caryl (WP)

A história de um líder oposicionista à ditadura de Vladimir Putin, o czar de todas as Rússia, e criminoso de guerra e tirano feroz contra o seu próprio povo.

OpinionRussia locked up Vladimir Kara-Murza for telling the truth about Ukraine

Op-ed Editor/International
The Washington Post, July 28, 2022

On a cold spring evening in April, Russian opposition leader Vladimir Kara-Murza was parking outside his Moscow apartment building when five uniformed police officers surrounded his car. The officers yanked him from the vehicle and hustled him into a waiting van. Next thing he knew, he was occupying a 6-by-9-foot cell in Moscow’s notorious Khamovniki police station.

Initially, he was detained on a spurious charge: disobeying the police. But on April 22, 11 days after his arrest, Kara-Murza was indicted on a charge of “spreading deliberately false information” under a law passed in the wake of Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine. It’s a charge that could bring 10 years in prison.

The charging document cited a speech that Kara-Murza, a Post contributing columnist, had given weeks earlier to the Arizona House of Representatives. His remarks accused Russian forces of dropping cluster bombs on residential areas in Ukraine and staging airstrikes on maternity wards, hospitals and schools. He did not mince words: “These are war crimes that are being committed by the dictatorial regime in the Kremlin against a nation in the middle of Europe.”

The atrocities Kara-Murza described have been verified by news organizations around the world and have led to international war crimes investigations. But Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin couldn’t bear the spectacle of a Russian citizen airing these uncomfortable facts — so it locked him up for telling the truth.

Read this essay in Russian: Кремль отправил Владимира Кара-Мурзу в тюрьму за правду об Украине

If telling the truth qualifies as a “crime,” it is one that the 40-year-old Kara-Murza has committed proudly and consistently. For two decades, he has been an outspoken opponent of the Putin regime. His efforts have come at a huge price: He was poisoned in 2015 and again in 2017, narrowly surviving both attempts on his life. Over the years, associates and friends have been attacked, jailed or killed — experiences that have hardened his ideological rejection of Putin’s Kremlin.

Yet he’s not afraid to say so. The day before his latest arrest, he told CNN in an April 10 interview that Russia’s current government “is a regime of murderers.”

Even when it has been clear that pursuing his ideals might put his life at risk, Kara-Murza — a historian and documentary filmmaker as well as a journalist and activist — has continued to campaign for human rights and liberal democracy. Meanwhile, many politicians in the West have abandoned these values, whether by appeasing dictators such as Putin or by eroding democratic principles in their own societies.

Kara-Murza didn’t have to take this path. Years ago, he settled his family — his wife, Evgenia, and three children, now ages 16, 13 and 10 — in a Northern Virginia suburb. He holds a British passport as well as a Russian one; he easily could have embraced a full-time life in the West. His friends often express dismay over his insistence on returning to Russia — but Kara-Murza maintained that he could not advocate for the rights and freedoms of the Russian people without enduring the same travails they face.

Even when it has been clear that pursuing his ideals might put his life at risk, Kara-Murza — a historian and documentary filmmaker as well as a journalist and activist — has continued to campaign for human rights and liberal democracy. Meanwhile, many politicians in the West have abandoned these values, whether by appeasing dictators such as Putin or by eroding democratic principles in their own societies.

Kara-Murza didn’t have to take this path. Years ago, he settled his family — his wife, Evgenia, and three children, now ages 16, 13 and 10 — in a Northern Virginia suburb. He holds a British passport as well as a Russian one; he easily could have embraced a full-time life in the West. His friends often express dismay over his insistence on returning to Russia — but Kara-Murza maintained that he could not advocate for the rights and freedoms of the Russian people without enduring the same travails they face.

Kara-Murza recently described his imprisonment as a kind of badge of honor worn by an illustrious line of Russian oppositionists before him. In a letter sent from prison, he cited the example of dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, who proudly recalled being charged with “anti-Soviet activity”: “I wear these convictions like medals!”

As he recovered, Kara-Murza continued his opposition work. He traveled, organizing grass-roots activists for Open Russia, a pro-democracy group funded by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former oligarch who was imprisoned for 10 years for defying Putin. Kara-Murza made a film about Nemtsov that celebrated his mentor’s achievements as a defender of democracy, screening it to audiences inside Russia and abroad. And he continued lobbying foreign governments to pass Magnitsky Act-style personal sanctions.

Then, on Feb. 1, 2017, he was attacked again. After eating in a Moscow cafe with a fellow activist, Kara-Murza suddenly began experiencing familiar symptoms: difficulty breathing, plummeting blood pressure, a racing heart rate. Before he lost consciousness, he managed to call Evgenia, who swiftly boarded a flight for Moscow. Before she arrived, doctors placed Kara-Murza in an artificial coma to aid their treatment of his failing lungs and kidney. Their diagnosis: “acute intoxication with an unknown substance.”

Vladimir Kara-Murza: Prison doesn’t give me many views of the sun

Kara-Murza fought his way back to health after the 2017 poisoning and again rejoined opposition efforts. In public appearances in Russia and elsewhere, he persisted in calling out the Putin regime for falsifying election results and other distortions of the truth — despite the obvious risk. He also began to write regularly for The Post. His opinion columns vividly portrayed Russia’s real political life, with all its complexity and turmoil, and its contradictions with the official image of a people seamlessly united behind a strong leader.

In a 2018 column about Putin’s suppression of political opponents, for example, Kara-Murza wrote: “A leader with real popular support would not be afraid of real competition at the ballot box.”




Vladimir Kara-Murza, 
recovering in 2017 after
 he was poisoned 
for the second time, 
is visited in the hospital 
by, from left, his wife, 
Evgenia; his lawyer 
and friend Vadim 
Prokhorov; and Aleksandr Podrabinek, an activist 
and Soviet-era dissident. 
(Family photo)

An impressive array of U.S. legislators has called for Kara-Murza’s release, as have politicians and human rights organizations around the world. “As I said at the time of Vladimir Kara-Murza’s arrest, the Kremlin’s charges against him are a cynical attempt to silence him,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said this month. “Vladimir should be released, as should all of those who have been detained for doing nothing more than speaking the truth.” Fred Ryan, publisher of The Post, said: “The Biden administration and Congress must use all the levers at their disposal — including tougher sanctions on those closest to Putin — to secure Kara-Murza’s freedom immediately.”

Putin, however, shows little sign of relenting. On June 8, a Moscow court extended Kara-Murza’s pretrial detention by two months. His lawyer, Vadim Prokhorov, recently announced that investigators in Moscow opened another criminal case against Kara-Murza this month based on his alleged membership “in an undesirable organization."

All this has tragically vindicated Kara-Murza’s two decades of warnings about Putin. Meanwhile, the Magnitsky Act-style sanctions he has long advocated are serving as the model for a host of international measures punishing Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. An unprecedented wave of internal repression has put more than 16,000 Russians behind bars. And it has put Kara-Murza on a collision course with a ruthless dictator who acts as though he has little left to lose.

Yet Kara-Murza remains upbeat. In a recent letter from prison, he characteristically noted others who have dared to speak out against tyranny. “Each of the thousands of Russian antiwar protesters is standing up not only for the people of Ukraine and for the international rule of law but also for the future of our own country,” he wrote. “Each one is giving another reason to hope that a renewed, reformed post-Putin Russia can one day take its place in the community of democratic nations — and in a Europe that would finally become whole, free and at peace.”

Such optimism might sound misplaced at a moment when Russia is once again reverting to despotism. Knowing Vladimir Kara-Murza, though, I know how he would respond to my skepticism: The night, he would say, is always darkest before the dawn.


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