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Yulia Navalnaya accuses Russia’s president of mocking Christianity as officers refuse handy over stays to household.
Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of opposition chief Alexey Navalny, has demanded that Russian authorities hand over his physique for burial as she accused President Vladimir Putin of mocking Orthodox Christian values and “torturing” his corpse.
“Give us my husband’s physique,” Navalnaya mentioned in a video launched Saturday, including that she wished to offer him a conventional Orthodox funeral.
“You tortured him alive, and now you proceed to torture him to dying. You’re mocking the stays of the useless,” she mentioned in a message to Putin.
Navalny, a distinguished opponent of Putin, died final week in a distant maximum-security penal colony within the Arctic, the place he was serving a 19-year jail sentence on extremism costs.
Authorities declare he died of pure causes. They even refused handy over his stays to the household 9 days later.
Navalny’s mom, Lyudmila Navalnaya, has mentioned investigators had been pressuring her to bury her son “secretly” in a non-public ceremony with out mourners.
An official instructed her she needed to give in to their calls for as a result of Navalny’s physique was already decomposing, she mentioned.
Navalny’s aides mentioned authorities had threatened to bury him within the jail colony the place he died except his household agreed to their phrases.
“They wish to take me to the tip of the cemetery, to a brand new grave and say, ‘Right here lies your son,’” his mom mentioned in a video on YouTube on Thursday. “I are inclined to disagree.”
“How low are you going to sink?”
“No true Christian might ever do what Putin is doing now with Alexey’s physique,” his widow mentioned within the video, questioning Putin’s typically professed Christian religion.
‘What are you going to do along with his physique? How low are you going to sink to mock the person you killed?” she requested, saying, “We already knew that Putin’s religion was false. However now we see it extra clearly than ever earlier than.”
The Russian chief is usually depicted in church, immersing himself in ice water to rejoice Epiphany and visiting holy websites in Russia. He has promoted what he has referred to as “conventional values,” with out which, as he as soon as mentioned, “society degrades,” and touted his shut relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has denounced accusations – even from world leaders – that Putin was concerned in Navalny’s dying, calling them “completely unfounded, brazen accusations in opposition to the pinnacle of the Russian state.”
Musician Nadya Tolokonnikova, who turned broadly identified after serving practically two years in jail for taking part in a protest at Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral along with her band Pussy Riot in 2012, launched a video accusing Putin of hypocrisy .
“We had been imprisoned for violating conventional values. However nobody tramples on conventional Russian values greater than you, Putin, your officers and your monks who pray for all of the murders you commit, yr after yr, day after day,” mentioned Tolokonnikova, who lives overseas. “Putin, have a conscience, give his mom the physique of her son.”
Tolokonnikova was one among a number of cultural icons to launch movies calling on Russian authorities to return Navalny’s physique to his household.
Critics say authorities worry a funeral might flip right into a large-scale public present of help for the opposition chief.
The funeral preparations for Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Putin ally turned rival and founding father of the Wagner mercenary group who died final August, had been shrouded in secrecy and his physique was buried on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, away from the gaze of the media .
Whereas the Russian media has given little house to information of Navalny’s dying, individuals have flocked to the streets in cities throughout the nation to pay tribute to the opposition chief. In response to protest monitoring group OVD-Information, police arrested at the very least 400 individuals within the first 24 hours since information of his dying.
Navalny’s widow says Russia’s Putin tortures him even to dying and calls for physique | Information
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