RUSSIA: Human rights defender Oleg Orlov (70) jailed
By Aaron Rhodes
Foref Europe (06.03.2024) – On February 27, 2024, a Russian court sentenced human rights defender Oleg Orlov to a two-and-a-half year prison term, convicting him of “discrediting” the Russian army due to his portrayal of the Russian regime as “totalitarian and fascist.”
In a statement prior to his sentencing, Orlov defended the veracity of his words, showing that the Russian government not only dictates social, political, and economic life but has also tightened its grip on culture, scientific thought, and even private lives. He illustrated this with examples of Russian citizens facing persecution for expressing their beliefs, and noting that President Putin had claimed that Poland “forced Hitler to start World War II.”
According to Orlov, individuals are being punished for exercising “any independent judgment,” while political prisoners are losing their lives simply for envisioning a democratic, prosperous Russia that poses no threat to the outside world.
In a concluding echo of the late dissident leader Alexei Navalny’s words, Orlov urged, “Don’t lose heart, and do not lose optimism. Truth is on our side.”
Ironically, the court’s decision serves as an inadvertent validation of Orlov’s claims, and was thus self-contradictory. Indeed, it demonstrates Russia’s descent into a fascist state. In doing so, it also exposes the sheer absurdity of claims that Russia’s war against Ukraine is justified as one to eradicate fascism—a falsehood repeated to the Russian people in daily media propaganda. Accusing others of one’s own malevolence remains a hallmark of fascist propaganda.
During my tenure as the executive director of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF), I had the privilege of cooperating with Orlov and the Memorial human rights organization. Orlov’s personality and moral character exemplify the noble aspects of Russia’s human rights dissident tradition: principled, selfless, scrupulously nonpartisan, committed to intellectual integrity, and fearless.
Despite the bleak situation in Russia, along with many other post-Soviet republics and societies globally, we owe it to Orlov and his colleagues not to give up; to keep insisting on the rights of all to basic political freedoms.
Aaron Anthony Rhodes was the Executive Director of the International Helsinki Federation from 1993 to 2007.
In 2018, he published The Debasement of Human Rights: How Politics Sabotage the Ideal of Freedom (Encounter Books, New York). His articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Die Zeit, The American Interest, National Review Online…
HRWF Note
In 2022, Oleg Orlov was chairing a plenary session of the annual OSCE Human Dimension implementation Meeting in Warsaw. I interviewed him and he became a regular reader of our daily newsletters (Willy Fautré)
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