Navalny to be buried on Friday, wife fears possible arrests
Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 In other news, the spokesperson for the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny
00:04 has announced that his funeral is to be held this Friday in Moscow.
00:08 Navalny died suddenly in an Arctic prison earlier this month.
00:12 And today, Navalny's widow, Yulia Navalny,
00:15 addressed the European Parliament in Brussels,
00:18 where her words drew a standing ovation.
00:29 Well, during her speech, Navalny said she feared arrests at the funeral
00:34 and once again directly blamed Vladimir Putin for her husband's death.
00:39 But first, we spent a week getting Alexei's body and organising funeral.
00:47 Then I choose the cemetery and coffin.
00:51 The funeral will take place the day after tomorrow.
00:55 And I'm not sure yet whether it will be peaceful
01:00 or whether police will arrest those who have come to say goodbye to my husband.
01:08 With me now is our chief foreign editor, Rob Parsons.
01:11 And Rob, what more do we know about Navalny's funeral on Friday?
01:14 Well, we know it's taken an extraordinary amount of effort
01:17 on the part of those organising the funeral for it to happen at all.
01:20 We heard Yulia Navalny, them mentioning the fact that it had taken
01:25 over a week to get the body of Alexei Navalny back from the authorities
01:29 as they tried to blackmail his mother, Lyudmila,
01:32 into not holding a public ceremony.
01:34 Eventually they gave way. It's now going to take place.
01:38 First of all, there's going to be a public ceremony in Marino,
01:41 which is just in the south of Moscow.
01:43 And then at the Borisovsky Cemetery is going to be the funeral there as well.
01:49 It's going to be open to the public by all accounts,
01:51 but it's not at all clear, as we heard her saying just then,
01:55 that whether or not the authorities will make it difficult for people
01:59 to get to the funeral itself, whether they'll put obstacles
02:03 in the way of the roads leading to the cemetery or not, that sort of thing.
02:09 But what is clear, I think, is that the authorities are going to continue
02:12 to go and make life as difficult as they possibly can for anybody
02:16 who wants to express any sort of support.
02:19 The fact, for instance, that it's taking place at the Borisovsky Cemetery
02:22 right in the southern corner of Moscow,
02:25 at least half an hour away from the centre on Metro,
02:29 is an indication of just what they're trying to achieve.
02:31 This is not the sort of normal ceremony you would expect,
02:34 funeral you'd expect for a man of such prominence and fame as Alexei Navalny.
02:39 There will be a ceremony somewhere in the centre,
02:41 one of the more famous cemeteries.
02:43 That's not going to happen.
02:44 They are determined to try and make this as quiet as possible.
02:48 It should have happened, incidentally, on Thursday.
02:50 But Vladimir Putin is due to address the upper house of the Russian parliament
02:54 on Thursday, the Federal Assembly.
02:56 And the fear, I think, in the Kremlin was that a funeral of somebody
02:59 as prominent as Alexei Navalny would take away
03:02 from the impact of Putin's speech.
03:04 And speaking of Putin, Rob, is it likely now, given Navalny's death,
03:08 that the Russian president will ease up in his determination
03:12 to crush dissent in Russia?
03:13 No, I think is the simple answer to that.
03:16 He's going to use this to clamp down even harder.
03:20 The fact, the nature of the way in which he has, first of all,
03:25 crushed Alexei Navalny, the constant harassment,
03:28 the frequent imprisonments, the poisoning of him,
03:32 his banishment eventually to this terrible prison camp
03:35 in the Arctic North, where he eventually died,
03:38 the refusal to give the body back to his mother, Lyudmila,
03:43 until a lengthy struggle had taken place to get it back,
03:46 the fact that other prominent leaders like Vladimir Karamurza
03:53 has been in prison for the last few years
03:55 and is going to be in prison for 25,
03:57 Putin has been treated appallingly as well,
03:59 another man who was poisoned.
04:00 The fact that, for instance, just this week,
04:02 Ali Agarlov, one of the members of Memorial,
04:05 which won the Nobel Peace Prize for its defence of human rights
04:09 in Russia, has been sent to prison for allegedly discrediting
04:13 the Russian army, gives everybody in Russia
04:15 who is thinking of dissent a very clear indication.
04:18 Don't even think about it if you want to stay out of prison,
04:22 which makes it even braver to see the widow of Alexei Navalny,
04:28 Yulia Navalny, setting herself forward
04:30 as the focal point of dissent in Russia,
04:32 although it's completely out of the question
04:35 that she'll ever go back to Russia
04:37 until this regime comes to an end.