Russian Opposition leader Alexei Navalny ended a three week protest hunger strike on 23 April 2021.
There had been concern about his health, and alarms raised by the AEJ along with the Committee to Protect Journalists, Article 19 and Reporters Sans Frontieres against a record wave of arrests, attacks and criminal cases against journalists.
The London-based Justice for Journalists organisation reported nearly 400 attacks on Russian media workers and their families in the last few weeks of January.
The Council of Europe issued a formal media freedom alert on the Europe-wide platform for the safety of journalists.
The AEJ – along with many other media and human rights organizations – protested against his arrest on return to Russia and former AEJ president Otmar Lahodynsky wrote that the sentencing of Navalny for 3½ years in a penal colony was “a grotesque infringement of elementary human rights.” Lahodynsky said there had been no investigation into the poison-attack on Navalny in August 2020 and called for sanctions by the EU.
And the man who helped evacuate Navalny from Russia said his sentencing “suggests Russia under Vladimir Putin is on an unstoppable shift back to the old authoritarian ways of the Soviet Union” – in a guest commentary on the AEJ International website.
Jaka Bizilj is the founder of the Cinema for Peace Initiative and flew with Navalny to Berlin in a private plane on 22 August 2020 at the request of Pussy Riot in a humanitarian gesture supported by the German government and the Presidents of France and Finland.
The Navalny drama played against the backdrop of a power struggle in neighbouring Belarus.
Germany said Navalny was poisoned by a Novichok chemical agent – the same poison used on former Russian agent Sergei Skripal in the UK – and Russia needed to answer questions. President Lukashenko stepped in to support his benefactor and ally Vladimir Putin by claiming he had intercepted German phone calls proving the Navalny poisoning claim was fake.
Navalny ends hunger strike
EU concerned about Navalny health
AEJ joins alarm about journalists
Committee to Protect Journalists on arrests
Reporters Sans Frontieres on press freedom
Justice for Journalists organisation reports attacks
Council of Europe media freedom alert
Navalny returns to Russia
Former AEJ president on Navlany
From the man who helped Navalny escape
The Navalny poisoning
Putin’s biggest critic
Russia internal problems
Russian opposition watches Belarus
Germany says Novichok used
Lukashenko says Novichok claim fake
More on Navalny at AEJ International
Photo by Dmitry Aleshkovskiy
