Alexei Navalny stands inside a glass cage prior to a hearing in a Moscow court in February
Keystone / Yuri Kochetkov
Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny has been honoured by 25 NGOs in Geneva for his courage. He is currently imprisoned in Russia and has been on a hunger strike for three weeks.
Navalny, a prominent opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was chosen for his “extraordinary courage and heroic efforts to alert people to the serious human rights violations by Putin’s regime in Russia”, UN Watch director Hillel Neuer said in a statement on Monday.
Leonid Volkov, the opposition’s chief strategist, welcomed the news. “It is very important that Alexei Navalny’s moral courage be recognised internationally as he goes through one of the most difficult tests of his life,” he said. Volkov said Navalny had been put in prison for “daring to survive a poison attack that almost killed him”.
The award will be received on Navalny’s behalf by his daughter, Daria Navalnaya, at the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy on June 8. The summit will host dissidents, activists, victims and former political prisoners from China, Cuba, Iran, Turkey, Belarus and Zimbabwe. They will testify about the human rights situation in their countries.
Hunger strike
Navalny, who the West says has been wrongly jailed and should be freed, returned to Russia in January after recovering from what German doctors say was a nerve agent poisoning.
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Swiss call for release of Russian opposition leader Navalny
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Switzerland has joined international protests about following a prison sentence for Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.
In February he was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison by a Moscow court for charges of parole violations that he called politically motivated. Russia has said it has yet to see evidence he was poisoned.
He stopped eating on March 31 to protest against the conditions of his detention in Russia. He accuses the prison administration of denying him access to a doctor even though he has a double herniated disc, according to his lawyers.
Staff at the Russian prison say they have offered Navalny proper treatment but that he refused it.
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If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.
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Freedom of expression: universal, but not absolute
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Under threat in many countries and pushed to its limits elsewhere, freedom of expression as we know it is at a critical crossroads.
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Switzerland’s foreign ministry has urged Russia to conduct or cooperate with an investigation into the poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
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If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.