Verbatim report of proceedings

Wednesday, 19 April 2023 - Strasbourg

Repression in Russia, in particular the cases of Vladimir Kara-Murza and Alexei Navalny

  Clare Daly (The Left). – Madam President, it’s really impressive that the Parliament has swung into action so quickly in relation to the case of anti-Putin, anti-Ukrainian war journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was given a 25-year prison sentence this week for his journalism, a sentence rightly slammed by the EU as outrageously harsh.

It is, but it’s still 150 years less than Julian Assange will get if he’s convicted and prosecuted in the US for his anti-war journalism, exposing US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. He’s been in prison for over four years, denied of his freedom for many more. Yet we’ve never had one of these discussions in here calling for his release. We’ve never had one discussion about the case of Pablo González, imprisoned in Poland for the last year for his anti-war journalism.

Unless we’re consistent in these motions then they are nothing more than meaningless geopolitical shams, the instrumentalisation of human rights for political ends. And that is not good enough.