“Russia will be free. Tell everyone.”
Sentenced to 25 years in prison today, the Russian historian, journalist and human rights activist Vladimir Kara-Murza "greeted his verdict with a smile."
“Twenty-five years is the highest score I could get for what I did, what I believe in as a citizen, as a patriot, as a politician.”
After a year in detention and a secret trial on charges of treason for his outspoken opposition to Vladimir Putin’s bloody war in Ukraine, the 41-year-old Kara-Murza was taken away from a courtroom in Moscow this morning.
Subscribers to The Real Story got a rundown on Kara-Murza’s case and cause last Friday: We Can Be Heroes, Just For One Day. Among those heroes I counted the Chinese civil rights activists Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi, who were sentenced last week to 14 years and 12 years in jail, respectively, for attending a meeting, and also to Hongkongers Albert Ho and Elizabeth Tang.
Ho and Tang are among more than 200 people who have been arrested since Beijing violated its commitments to the United Nations, crushed Hong Kong’s democracy movement and imposed its sadistic National Security Law on tne formerly half-free city state three years ago. As I mentioned last week, so far as I can determine everyone I interviewed during my time in Hong Kong is either in jail, on trial or in exile.
Last fall, Canada sanctioned several Russian officials involved in the persecution of Kara-Murza and other Russian patriots. “These are the tools that human rights defender and journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza, advocated for & we’re using them to sanction those who enacted a witch hunt against him & other Russian dissidents,” Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly said at the time. Which is all to the good. But Canada has imposed no sanctions whatsoever on any of the Chinese officials involved in the statutory dismemberment of Hong Kong’s embryonic democracy.
With the recent shocking revelations about Beijing’s interference in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections, Canadians are becoming acutely aware of a strata of Beijing-aligned compradors who enjoy prominence at every level of government in this country. I live in hope that any Canadian politician even remotely associated with Xi Jinping’s gangster regime and his Canadian proxies will be chased out of office, never to be heard from again.
Because hope is all we’ve got.
Kara-Murza is among roughly 20,000 Russians who have been arrested since the Kremlin’s barbaric war began in February last year. I wrote about Kara-Murza and other prominent figures in the Russian resistance, such as Alexei Navalny, Ilya Yashin and Alexei Gorinov, along with the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, in my Postmedia column last week: The men who dare defy Vladimir Putin: One by one, Russia’s democratic opposition leaders are being killed or jailed.
As if to rub salt in the wound, Kara-Murza’s sentence included a fine of 400,000 rubles ($5,000) and barred from practicing journalism for seven years.
Kara-Murza’s wife Evgenia responded to today’s news this way: “This sentence is the high recognition of the effectiveness of Vladimir’s work. He has proven time and again that he would not back down, that he would not abandon his fight, that he would not betray his country and betray his ideals. That he would keep on fighting.”
Kara-Murza’s lawyer Vadim Prokhorov notes that Kara-Murza’s health - he was previously poisoned in two assassination attempts - has worsened over the past year of his detention. “And so just now, it’s possible to claim that this long years imprisonment for him is quite some kind of death penalty.”
U.S. Ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy came to the Moscow courthouse for today’s sentencing. "Vladimir Kara-Murza and countless Russians believe and hope for a future in which fundamental freedoms are respected in Russia. And we share these hopes,” she said. "The criminalization of criticism of government actions is a manifestation of fear, not strength,"
Canada’s Ambassador to Russia Alison Leclaire: "Thirty years ago, Russia fought for the creation of democracy. Now this struggle has taken a sad turn."
Iwin Cotler, Canada’s former justice minister and the founder and chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights (disclosure: Kara-Murza and I are senior fellows with the Raoul Wallenberg Centre), had this to say: “Thinking of my friend Vladimir Kara-Murza, a ray of light piercing through the darkest clouds of oppression. A hero of Russia, today he was convicted to 25 years in prison for telling the truth about Putin’s crimes. His jailers already tried to kill him twice. We must secure his release.”
Cotler pointed out a Canadian connection to Kara-Murza’s persecution: He was twice poisoned on his return to Moscow after his testimony arguing for a Magnitsky law before Canadian parliamentary committees.
And there is as direct connection between the Magnitsky laws Kara-Murza championed in Europe, Canada and the United States and the judge who presided over Kara-Murza’s trial and sentencing. Sergei Podoprigorov, was one of the first individuals sanctioned under the American Magnitsky law ten years ago. Podoprigorov was also the judge who approved the pretrial detention of Sergei Magnitsky himself, the man after whom the sanctions laws are named.
Sergei Magnitsky was the whistle-blower who was murdered in a Moscow prison in 2009, just a week before his one-year term was about to come up. Magnitsky had uncovered a massive tax fraud overseen by several senior Russian officials. He was tried posthumously and convicted on tax evasion charges.
I realize all of this is just bloody depressing, but do pay attention to how Kara-Murza greeted his verdict today, and to what he said in the full statement he issued in anticipation of his sentencing.
“I knew it a year ago when I saw people in black uniforms and black masks running after my car in the rearview mirror. Such is the price for speaking up in Russia today.
“But I also know that the day will come when the darkness over our country will dissipate. When black will be called black and white will be called white; when at the official level it will be recognized that two times two is still four; when a war will be called a war, and a usurper a usurper; and when those who kindled and unleashed this war, rather than those who tried to stop it, will be recognized as criminals.
“This day will come as inevitably as spring follows even the coldest winter.”
If Vladimir Kara-Murza can hold onto hope, then so can we.
Russia will be free. Tell everyone.
From Vlad's lips to God's ear. Good job Terry.
Thank you, Terry. This one made me cry. God bless Vladimir Kara-Murza, his wife and family and all those who stand up for and sacrifice themselves for what is right and good.