Russian activist in city to champion memory of slain statesman, challenge Putin regime

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/10/2018 (2607 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Journalist and activist Vladimir Kara-Murza – who has been poisoned twice and nearly died while opposing Russian President Vladimir Putin – says there is a way Canadians can show their solidarity with the Russian people pushing for a new government and fair elections: name a street or public plaza after assassinated opposition leader Boris Nemtsov.

Nemtsov, who had risen to be the strongest opponent to Putin, was gunned down on a bridge only 200 metres from the Kremlin in February 2015. Five Chechins were later convicted of the crime, but opposition leaders continue to believe Putin ordered the slaying.

Kara-Murza, who is in Winnipeg to speak Tuesday at a 6:30 p.m. event at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, said the city council in Washington, D.C., named a square in front of the Russian Embassy after Nemtsov earlier this year, while Lithuania renamed a park across from the embassy in the capital city of Vilnius a few weeks ago.

“The mindboggling thing is the Russian government, the Kremlin, is continuing to fight against Boris Nemtsov even now, even in death,” Kara-Murza said Monday during a news conference at the museum.

“They are now fighting his memory and his legacy and name. They are refusing and vetoing all public initiatives and petitions for any kind of official commemoration – forget about a street name, no sign on the bridge, no plaque on his home… nothing.

“It was made abundantly clear to us, as long as this regime is in power, we will not be allowed to honour and commemorate a Russian statesman in Russia.”

Kara-Murza said he is grateful politicians in western democratic nations have “stepped in to do now what we cannot do in our own country.”

He applauded former federal justice ministers Irwin Cotler and Peter MacKay for currently pushing an initiative to do similar commemorative namings in Ottawa and Toronto.

“I very much hope that Canada will become the third country in the world after the United States and Lithuania to enact an official commemoration for Boris Nemtsov,” Kara-Murza said. “I know, one day, the Russian state will be proud that their embassies and consulates are standing on squares and streets and parks named after Boris Nemtsov.”

Kara-Murza said he is especially proud of the Russians who come out to protest the Putin government.

“It is significant that so many of these protesters are young people… the people who literally represent the future of Russia,” he said. “Mr. Putin is 66 years old, he doesn’t represent the future.

“The protesters are between the age of 17 and 22. They are the future.”

Meanwhile, Kara-Murza said the Russian government is wrong when it claims people in the West are funding opposition leaders and parties.

“None of this has any basis in reality,” he said. “It is only for Russian citizens to change the situation in Russia. We will do it ourselves.

“The only thing we ask of our friends in the West, including here in Canada, is that you stay true to your own values, that you do not support the Putin regime by treating Mr. Putin as a worthy and respectable partner on the world stage.”

Kara-Murza praised Canada for passing the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act last year. The act, similar to the American Magnitsky Act, prevents Russians implicated in corruption or human rights abuses from getting a visa to come to Canada, or to bank their money in this country.

“People who violate the norms of democracy in their own countries should not be able to enjoy the fruits and privileges of democracy in other countries,” he said.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca