For Ukraine, for their Freedom and Ours ! - CSO
Vladimir Kara-Murza
Vladimir Kara-Murza, one of Russia's most prominent dissidents, is among the last to have not gone into exile and to fight from within.
He was sentenced in April 2023 to 25 years in a "strict regime colony".
We supported his candidacy for the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize and express our satisfaction at his release in August 2024.
EXTRACTS -
Political change in Russia always comes unexpectedly. The czarist minister Vyacheslav von Plehve, who before 1904 called for a “small victorious war,” never imagined it would lead to a revolutionary explosion and force the monarchy to agree to a constitution, a parliament and freedom of the press. Vladimir Lenin, complaining to the Swiss Social Democrats in January 1917 that “we of the older generation may not live to see the decisive battles of this coming revolution,” did not suspect that it was only a few weeks away. And absolutely no one in the summer of 1991 expected that by the end of the year, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union would be banned and the Soviet Union dissolved.
The next time, change will come in exactly the same way — abruptly and unexpectedly. None of us knows the specific moment and specific circumstances, but it will happen in the foreseeable future. The chain of events leading to these changes was started by the regime itself [with its full-scale invasion of Ukraine] in February 2022. It’s only a matter of time.
And this means (...) that a window of opportunity for the reestablishment of the state on democratic principles will soon appear again in Russia. Not a “window of guarantees,” not a “window of a final result,” not a “window of a bright and happy future” — but rather precisely a window of opportunity that we must use wisely and not squander yet again, as was done in the 1990s. And that is why a serious, meaningful and public conversation about those missed opportunities is so important — not for historical reflection but to avoid stepping on the same rake again.
Hardly anyone can dispute that the leaders of democratic Russia of the 1990s missed a unique historical chance
We have no right to repeat this mistake when the window of opportunity opens again. All archives must be opened and published. All the crimes of both the Soviet and Putin regimes must receive a proper evaluation at the state level. All structures involved in these crimes — above all the FSB — must be liquidated, and the people who committed these crimes must be held accountable before the law. Those who served as conductors of repressive policies should be deprived of the right to hold government posts — and this will not be a witch hunt (as some current officials will once again shout) but the necessary protection against a new authoritarian revenge. And I would like to emphasize (although it goes without saying): To investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Putin regime in the course of its aggression against Ukraine, we will have to create an international tribunal (modeled on similar ones for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda), to which all suspects, regardless of their rank and position, must be transferred.
Only in this way — having fully confronted and condemned these crimes — will Russia be able to truly free itself from the burden of the past and move forward toward the creation of a free and modern state based on law and universal values. This will ensure that the country can finally avoid entering the same old vicious circle, so that the next generation of Russian politicians will no longer need to conduct the same old discussions between Vladimir labor camp and Moscow prison.
Insights| Interview with Evguenia Kara-Mourza published in Desk-Russie : « La victoire de l’Ukraine est très importante pour que les Russes soient libérés un jour du régime de Poutine »
15 Avril 2023
EXCERPTS - Interview by Marie Mendras
The liberation of Ukraine is a necessary step towards the liberation of the people of Russia, and first and foremost the liberation of political prisoners who are being held in totally intolerable conditions. It is an essential step towards bringing an end to Lukashenko's regime in Belarus. This message is very important to convey here in Europe, because not everyone clearly sees the link between the two. Do you agree with this assessment?
I believe that dictatorships and authoritarian regimes linked to the Russian regime are very dependent on Vladimir Putin. If there is no longer a Putin regime in Russia, Lukashenko will not be able to survive politically. The same thing will happen in other authoritarian countries. Putin and his regime are like a cancer that is metastasising in all directions. If it is removed, other countries will also be freed. Ukraine's victory is very important. Not only do Ukrainians have the right to choose their own path of development and join the European Union, but they also have the right to justice after everything the Russian army has done to them. I am angry when I hear people say that Ukraine should perhaps give up part of its territory, not to appease Putin, but to end the war. How can anyone suggest this to a people who have lost hundreds of children, thousands of civilians, and seen their cities destroyed by an army waging a war of aggression?
The war in Ukraine is the result of more than two decades of impunity for Vladimir Putin as he dragged Russia into several military conflicts and cracked down on peaceful protest in his own country. Neither he nor his men faced any serious consequences after invading Georgia, annexing Crimea and committing war crimes in Chechnya, after crushing protesters in Russia, after using political assassination as a tool to eliminate opponents of the regime. The newspaper Novaya Gazeta lost seven of its journalists, who were killed. Boris Nemtsov, a colleague and friend of my husband, was assassinated at the foot of the Kremlin in February 2015. Those who ordered this crime have never been brought to justice.
Vladimir has always explained that when human rights violations are considered an internal matter for a country, the moment inevitably comes when these internal repressions turn into external aggression. These two phenomena are absolutely inseparable; they are two sides of the same coin. I share his analysis.
The Putin regime is now a totalitarian regime. This transformation has been accompanied by the ideologisation of the population. Before, society was fragmented. The population was required to keep out of state affairs. Over the past year, ideologisation has been introduced on a large scale. For example, the school week in Russia begins with a lesson in patriotism. Children are asked to make signs of support for the government. This reminds us of the Hitler era.
The 2023 Nobel Peace Prize must be awarded to Vladimir Kara-Mourza
Call from academics, intellectuals, writers, artists and leaders of civil society associations in favor of awarding the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize to Russian opponent Vladimir Kara-Murza
A historian by training, Vladimir Kara-Murza is an independent journalist and political activist, who has become a symbol of the fight against corruption and repression in Russia.
His commitment to civil liberties dates back more than two decades. Close to Boris Nemtsov, the main opponent of Vladimir Putin's regime assassinated in Moscow on February 27, 2015, he himself was the subject of two poisoning attempts in 2015 and 2017, for which Vladimir Kara-Murza was arrested on April 11 2022 in Moscow and sentenced on April 17, 2023 to 25 years of detention in a penal colony for “high treason”, in particular for his positions against the invasion of Ukraine and the war of aggression waged there by the Federation of Russia. Detained as a political prisoner, he now risks spending the rest of his life in captivity.
Despite the serious threats weighing on him for several years, Vladimir Kara-Murza chose to stay in Russia to wage his battles against the regime while continuing to testify very regularly to international human rights bodies.
Internationally hailed for his political courage, Vladimir Kara-Murza was awarded the Council of Europe's Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize last year, which allowed him to create the “October 30 Foundation », which aims to provide financial assistance to the families of Russian political prisoners and to establish an international day in favor of political prisoners around the world, without distinction of ethnic or religious affiliation.
Vladimir Kara-Murza is already very weakened by more than a year of detention. He suffers from a serious illness which, under current Russian law, should exclude his confinement in a penitentiary center, and he is today in detention the subject of arbitrary harassment by the Russian authorities which puts his life in danger.
For all these reasons, we strongly support the candidacy of Vladimir Kara-Murza for the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize, submitted on January 24 by the Norwegian MP, Ingjerd Schou.