In his fight against Putin, Alexei Navalny needs all the help he can get. The might of the Russian state is pitted against him. Having failed to kill Navalny, the Kremlin has achieved its aim, at least in the short term, of silencing him: by locking him up in prison.
Navalny and his supporters have called on the west to assist him. So far, the response has been fairly measly: this week, the EU announced sanctions against a handful of figures in the Russian regime.
This small scale retaliation for the attempted murder of a political opponent won’t bother Putin much. Now, though, Navalny’s attempt to take on Putin has been undermined once again by an organisation which should know better.
Amnesty International has announced that it will no longer refer to Navalny as ‘a prisoner of conscience’. The reason? Past comments the Russian opposition leader has made about immigrants which, the organisation says, effectively amounts to hate speech.
Amnesty International, an organisation which should be helping Navalny, has helped undermine him
It didn’t take long for Amnesty – an organisation which professes to ‘take injustice personally’ – to change its mind.
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