Instead, he sent the following written statement to the court:
I will be speaking at the Supreme Court for the first time in my life. This institution has played different roles at different times in our country’s history. There was a time when innocent innocent victims would be convicted and sent to prison camps or firing squads. The court subsequently reversed these same judgments for lack of basis and issued a rehabilitation decision. Today we return to the first of these two stages of his. But surely he must not doubt that the second stage will come.
In essence, casuistry is a purely legal proceeding, and our casuistry appeal cites a number of undisputed legal irregularities, each of which raises the question of overturning my conviction. is sufficient. Much more can be written about these irregularities. This whole case essentially has no basis, since I was convicted solely for publicly expressing my opposition to the Putin regime and the war in Ukraine, i.e. for exercising my constitutional right to freedom of speech. We were also able to address the issue of lack of concrete crimes. Alternatively, claim that the same article of the criminal code for which I was sentenced to 25 years directly contradicts Russia’s international human rights obligations and that my conviction is invalid pursuant to Article 15(4) of the Constitution. You could also do that. . This is not just my opinion. This is the official finding of the United Nations Human Rights Committee.
Or I could write about the fact that my sentence was imposed by an illegally constituted court because the presiding judge faced a clear conflict of interest. The presiding judge was personally subject to international sanctions under the Magnitsky Act, which I helped enforce. Of course, this was purposefully and demonstratively organized. There is still much to write about.
But I’m not going to waste paper and time on this discussion. First of all, as a professional lawyer, you understand all of this completely. And it won’t affect your decision to sign. Secondly, to give an example of the illegality of a case that is illegal from beginning to end, just as the case of all Russian citizens arrested for speaking out against the war is illegal from beginning to end. Because it’s weird and pretty stupid. And finally, any argument based on law has no bearing on the reality of Russia under Vladimir Putin.
This reality was once described by George Orwell in his great novel 1984 with astonishing and frightening accuracy: Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is power. ” This slogan, posted on the facade of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, very accurately reflects the principles of the functioning of the Russian government today.
For the third year now, my country has been overrun by an elderly, unrehabilitated and illegal dictator who, to be more precise, has monopolized the right to speak and act on behalf of the country. We are waging a brutal, unjust and aggressive war. neighboring independent state. In the course of this invasion, the invaders committed true war crimes. Tens of thousands of civilians, including children, have been killed and injured in Ukraine over the past two years. Thousands of homes and hundreds of hospitals and schools were destroyed. These facts are well known and detailed in reports from international organizations. The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin on suspicion of war crimes.
But in our Orwellian reality, law enforcement and the justice system are concerned not with those who commit war crimes, but with those who speak out about them and try to stop them. There are currently dozens of people in Russian prisons and penal colonies openly speaking out against the war in Ukraine. They are completely different people: artists and clergy, politicians and journalists, lawyers and police officers, academics and entrepreneurs, students and pensioners – people of different mindsets, ages and professions, but today’s crime in Russia I didn’t want to be a silent accomplice to this. authorities. Today, it has become commonplace in the world to blame and condemn all Russian people equally, saying that we are all responsible for this war. But I am proud that in these dark, mean and frightening times in Russia, there were many people who were not afraid and did not remain silent, even at the cost of their freedom.
This entire incident is based on the negation of the very concept of law, justice, and legality. But it is also based on a crude and cynical fabrication that seeks to equate criticism of the authorities with harm to the country. Opposition activities are considered “treason.” But there’s nothing new in this either. That’s what all dictatorships do. In Nazi Germany, anti-fascist students from the White Rose Movement were tried for “treason.” Civil rights activists were charged with the same crime in apartheid South Africa. In the Soviet Union, one of our greatest compatriots, Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn, was also charged with “treason.”
History guided everything in the right direction.
