Moscow Threatens Activists from Numerically Small Nations with Up to 20 Years in Prison

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 23 – When Moscow arrests activists in the capital or in one of the major non-Russian republics, journalists and diplomats generally will at least cover the story; but when the center does so against numerically small indigenous nations who live far beyond the ring road, that often does not happen.

            As a result, the Russian authorities can be especially brutal in their cases, confident that they won’t face outrage and that what they do to these human communities will serve as a warning to others that a similar fate awaits even larger communities as ever more people in the West accept as normal what the Putin regime is doing. 

            That makes the case of nearly two dozen activists from these numerically small groups who were arrested a week ago and charged with being members of a terrorist organization especially important (sibreal.org/a/mogut-dat-do-20-let-k-zaschitnikam-prav-korennyh-narodov-prishli-s-obyskami-i-arestami/33630043.html).

            Such trumped-up charges are intended to keep them from being able to develop contacts with the international community and call attention to Moscow policies that could leave those charged with up to 20 years behind bars and snuff out any chance that these small groups will get the support they need to continue to resist.

            Three things lie behind this latest Moscow effort to “criminalize” the work of activists among the numerically small peoples of the north and far east – and none of them involve the secessionism that the Russian legal system is charging them with in an effort to stop their activities and eliminate what little support they do get abroad.

            First, Moscow is angry that these groups have continued to form their own organizations rather than become part of Kremlin-controlled bodies. Second, the center is furious that these groups have succeeded in taking part in UN conferences where they have been able to expose the falsehood of Kremlin claims.

And third – and this may be the most important cause of all – the Kremlin is upset that these groups have exposed the environmental depradation Putin’s development policies have inflicted on the north and far east and sometimes have been able to slow if not stop what Russia’s largest corporations want to do.

The International Committee of the Indigenous Peoples of Russia and the Memorial Anti-Discrimination Center has called the persecution of these activists “unprecedented political repressions” against small ethnic minorities few in the West have ever heard of, according to the SibReal portal.

In its statement, Memorial said that there is no evidence that the activists were guilty of any of the things Moscow is accusing them of and declared that these attacks represented “an effort by the authorities of the Russian Federation to criminalize activism and human rights actions” among peoples too small to be able to defend themselves effectively (adcmemorial.org/novosti/glavnoe/svobodu-dare-egerevoj-i-vsem-korennym-aktivistam-zhertvam-politicheskih-repressij-diskriminaczii-i-kolonialnogo-podavleniya-korennyh-narodov/).