Alexei Navalny daughter accepts human rights award on his behalf
Geneva, Jun 8: The daughter of jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny accepted a human rights award on her father's behalf on Tuesday for his courage in facing down President Vladimir Putin's government.
Daria Navalnaya, a 20-year-old student at Stanford University in California, said her father was dedicating the courage award given by the Geneva Summit for Human Rights to all political prisoners in Russia and Belarus.
You really should be looking at my father instead, but he's in a Russian prison right now simply because of what he says, does and believes in and because he didn't die when the Russian government wanted him to, Navalnaya said in a video message for the online event.
Navalny was arrested in January upon his return from Germany, where he had spent five months recuperating from a nerve agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin accusations that Russian officials dismiss. He was given a 2 1/2-year prison sentence in February for violating terms of a suspended sentence stemming from a 2014 embezzlement conviction that he denounced as politically motivated.
He went on a 24-day hunger strike in prison to protest the lack of medical treatment for severe back pain and numbness in his legs, ending it in April after getting the medical attention he demanded.
Navalny was chosen as this year's recipient for its annual courage award by more than two dozen human rights groups.
His daughter said her father wrote her a letter from behind bars after he was chosen.
In his letter my dad asked me today to give this award to every single political prisoner in Russia and Belarus, Navalnya said.
Also taking part in the event was Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the main challenger in a vote in August in Belarus in which authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko won a sixth term. That victory that was widely seen as rigged.
In a nod to her father's sense of humor, Navalnaya said he wrote in the letter: First and most importantly, please do not screw up your first public performance. And second, don't forget to say how extremely proud I am to receive this high award.
Navalnaya, while active in blogging and standing up for her dad, has rarely made public appearances.
Navalny was given the award for his extraordinary courage and heroic efforts to sound the alarm about the Putin regime's grave violations of the human rights of the Russian people, said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, which co-organizes the event.
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GBA razes down 400 houses in Yelahanka, minority families including Muslims worst affected
Bengaluru: In an incident reported from the state capital, more than 3,000 people living in Fakir Colony of the Kogilu Layout near Yelahanka were rendered homeless by the officials of the Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) on Saturday.
The officials, who said the 400 houses were constructed on encroached land, held the operation using nine tractors and nine earthmovers, razing down the houses.
They have ousted around 90 per cent of the families who had been living in the area for more than 30 years and belong to minority communities, including Muslims from the colony.
The bereaved residents have insisted that the government had provided them land in the locality to build houses and reside. “We have all official documents as well as Aadhaar cards and voter IDs as proofs. Our source of livelihood is only manual labour,” they added.
“Many of the families had mortgaged the houses to get loans from banks, but the GBA officials have razed our houses without giving any prior notice,” they said and added, “Some of the women here are pregnant, but the officers showed no concern for such people too.”
Referring to the title deeds, the residents said that the local representatives had assured them that they would be handed the documents. “So far, however, we were not told to vacate the houses. Since the houses were unexpectedly razed, our children’s documents and other valuables in the houses have been destroyed,” the residents added angrily.
They also expressed fury about representatives failing to come to their help in times of need. “They come here only to campaign and get our votes. When questioned about the propriety of destroying the houses, the police officers assaulted us,” some of them said.
Sara Saif Saufique, one of the residents in the Fakir Colony, said, “My family has been living here for three decades, but has unexpectedly lost the house since the officers did not give us notice. They came at around 4:30 am on Saturday, when we were sleeping, and started destroying the houses.”
She said with fury, further, “The officials also forcibly evicted us from the houses, without even permitting us to gather our winterwear or blankets.”
