The sentencing of Russian dissident and Nobel laureate Oleg Orlov is a new attempt by Vladimir Putin’s regime to silence its critics in Russia and “finish its work”, the Oslo Nobel Committee said on Wednesday, as quoted by AFP and Agerpres.
“For years, the Putin regime has tried to silence the leaders of Memorial and other important civil society organizations in Russia, and today it is using the war in Ukraine as an excuse to finish its ‘job,'” he said. The representative of the Nobel Committee in Norway, Jørgen Vatne Fridnes, is quoted in the statement.
“It is important that he does not succeed,” added Jørgen Vatne Friednes.
A Russian court on Tuesday sentenced the well-known human rights defender Oleg Orlov to two and a half years in prison for repeatedly exposing the military offensive launched two years ago against Ukraine on the orders of Vladimir Putin.
The Nobel Committee condemns the conviction of Orlov as politically motivated
This belief “is motivated by political considerations and is further evidence of the growing lack of respect for human rights and freedom of expression in today’s Russia,” the Nobel committee added. Oleg Orlov was accused of demonstrations against the Russian offensive on Ukraine and of signing an article extremely critical of the Russian authorities published in the French media outlet Mediapart.
In this article, he accused Russian troops of mass killings of the civilian Ukrainian population and lamented the victory in Russia of the “darkest forces”, those who “dreamed of total revenge” after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Active since the 1970s, Oleg Orlov has become one of the pillars of Memorial, the main organization that fights in Russia to protect the memory of those who suffered from Soviet repressions and documents the repressions of President Putin.
The NGO was disbanded at the end of 2021 by the Russian judiciary, and then was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, a few months after the start of Moscow’s war against Ukraine. Orlov promised to continue the struggle, even if, as he himself admitted, now his employees have to work “semi-underground”.
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Source: Hot News
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