Russian anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny died in February
The Association of Free Russians will pay homage to the late Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny in Lisbon on June 4. The march will also be held against Vladimir Putin’s “illegitimate regime” and the war in Ukraine.
The activists, who will gather at the Navalny Memorial on Rua Visconde de Santarém in Lisbon, intend to wear masks with the portrait of the Russian opposition figure and march towards Praça dos Restauradores “to the sound of anti-war songs and reciting quotes from Alexei Navalny,” the Association of Free Russians said in a statement sent to the Lusa news agency on Friday.
The event was organised on the day of the birth of the Russian anti-corruption campaigner, who died in February at the age of 47 while in the custody of Russian authorities in circumstances that are still unclear.
“We want to say that Vladimir Putin’s regime is illegitimate, that the current war must end and that troops must be withdrawn from the whole of Ukraine. We also want to call on Russians who are in relative safety abroad to act. And to Russians under Putin’s repressive regime, we ask them to keep the faith that the defeat of this regime is inevitable. Alexei has asked us not to give up. And we won’t give up,” the note reads.
The Russian activists also denounced that the memorial to Navalny has been “frequently vandalised by local “Putinists”’, with drawings with the letter ‘Z’ (the letter painted on Russian military vehicles used in the invasion of Ukraine).
They added that the memorial is being restored while they work with the local authorities to place “a stone memorial resistant to vandalism” in the same space.
The Russian activists also advocated changing the name of part of the street where the Russian Embassy in Lisbon is located, to “simultaneously honour Navalny and Boris Nemtsov”, the latter also an opposition figure who was shot dead on a bridge near the Kremlin wall in 2015.
“We would like official Russian representatives – the embassy staff – as well as Russian citizens themselves, to remember the sacrifice of these people and their faith in a future where Russia is free and peaceful,” they say.
The Association of Free Russians also stressed in the statement that Navalny died shortly before the ‘Noon against Putin’ demonstration, organised by the Russian opposition for the March elections, and two weeks after the opposition supported it.
“The action was a striking visual response to the repression and fraud on the day of Putin’s pseudo-election. At midday on March 17, people crowded into polling stations in protest. An exit poll carried out at the Russian Embassy in Lisbon revealed that Putin won only 9% of the vote in Portugal,” the association said.
An outspoken critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime, Navalny died aged 47.
The prison services said he collapsed suddenly after a walk in the Arctic penal colony where he was serving a 19-year sentence for extremism and the death certificate mentions natural causes.
His associates, his widow Yulia Navalnaia and many Western leaders accuse Putin of being responsible for Navalny’s death. The Russian Presidency has denied these accusations.
Source: LUSA
