Most of us who earn a living by investing in this and that tend to have a cavalier attitude towards people who agonise about human rights. Why, we ask, can’t these jholawalas also live lives whose main focus is to make as much money as possible? A minority of the truth tellers tend to get publicity (eg. the WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich who was imprisoned by the Russians on what appears to be arbitrary grounds) which gives them a chance to get something which vaguely resembles justice (eg. Gershkovich was recently let go by the Russians as part of a prisoner swap with America in which America had to release Russian thugs). Most human rights activists aren’t so lucky. They die lonely, anonymous deaths. A month ago one such man, the Russian pianist Pavel Kushnir, died in prison. As per Elizaveta Fokht’s report for the BBC, this is how it panned out:
“While the US and Russia were busy finalising the biggest exchange of prisoners since the Cold War, a gifted but little-known Russian pianist was dying in silence in jail.
Pavel Kushnir had protested repeatedly against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and began a hunger strike soon after his arrest in May, later refusing water too.
He died, slowly and without publicity, on 28 July – four days before a group of better-known dissidents were swapped for Kremlin spies, sleeper agents and killers imprisoned in the West.
After his lonely death, at a pre-trial detention centre in Birobidzhan in Russia’s Far East, the 39-year-old was mourned by only 11 people at his cremation.
Svetlana Kaverzina, an independent politician in Siberia, said no-one had tried to talk him out of sacrificing himself because they hadn’t been aware what was happening.”
So what was Pavel Kushnir’s crime? As per the BBC, here’s what resulted in Mr Kushnir landing up in prison:
“The YouTube channel where Kushnir published four anti-war videos had only five subscribers when he was arrested.
His “Foreign Agent Mulder” posts were a reference to a character in the US TV series, the X Files, which was popular in Russia in the 1990s, and also to a Russian law that allows people considered politically suspect to be declared “foreign agents”. In one clip Kushnir even appears with a hand-drawn FBI badge.
His final film, released in January, addressed the 2022 massacre of civilians by Russian troops in Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv.
A few months later, a Telegram channel close to the secret services, Operational Reports, posted a video showing masked men leading Kushnir into a white minivan.
It added that a criminal case had been opened, accusing him of making a public call to engage in terrorist activity, which is punishable by up to seven years in jail.
Nothing more was heard until 2 August, when the human rights activist Olga Romanova and the pianist’s friend, Olga Shkrygunova, revealed his death in an article published by online news organisation Vot Tak.
His 79-year-old mother, Irina Levina, later confirmed her son had died.”
All of that being said, where would be without the Russian weaponry that keeps our armed forces armed. And where would we be without the cheap Russian crude which keeps our oil refineries humming.
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