The Final speech of Alexei Navalny: How many times in the life of a person who is not engaged in anything criminal or illegal, can he pronounce his last words [closing argument]? None at all, zero times. Once, if hes unlucky. This is probably my sixth or seventh, maybe tenth last words in the past two years. I’ve heard the phrase, Defendant Navalny, your last words many times. The impression is that with the last words - for me, for someone, for everyone - the last days are imminent. Constantly, I’m required to give my last words, but I see that the last days are not imminent. And what convinces me of this most of all is the image of the three of you [judges], or better yet, together with the so-called victims representatives. These are people who look down at the table. You know, you are constantly looking at the table. I talk with you, and you look down at the table, always, all of you. You have nothing to say. [Judge] Elena [Korobchenko], whats your most common phrase for me? Investigators, prosecutors, members of the Federal Penitentiary Service, judges... You all tell me the same phrase, Alexey, you understand how things go... I understand everything, but I dont understand one thing: why are you endlessly looking down at the table? I have no illusions. I understand perfectly well that none of you will jump up, overturn this table, and say, Yes, Im sick of it all! The representatives of Yves Rocher wont stand up and say, youve convinced us with your eloquent words, Navalny! Because people arent put together that way. Human consciousness compartmentalizes guilt, otherwise people would constantly kill themselves. One cant just come home and say to their husband and kids, You know, today we put an innocent man in jail. It pains me and will pain me forever. People dont do that, they are put together differently. Theyll either say, Alexey, you know how it goes, or Where theres smoke theres fire. Or they will say: You shouldnt have gone after Putin, as a representative of the Investigative Committee recently said. “If he hadnt attracted attention, hadnt waved his hands in the air, hadnt gotten in the way, probably everything would have worked out.” Anyway, its very important for me to address you [judges] in particular (the others in the room or those who see or read my last words later aren’t important). Anyway, the people looking down at the table are the battlefield between those con-men who have seized power, and those people who want to change things. We are fighting for the people who look down at the table, shrug their shoulders, and act in a villainous way even when they dont have to. Theres a famous quote from the book, To Kill a Dragon. Everyones been taught evil, but why did you, beast, turn out first in your class? (That wasn’t addressed directly to the trial, by the way). A huge number of people, when they must act in a villainous way or when they act in such a way without being forced or even asked to, they just look down at the table, and try to ignore everything thats happening. And our battle for people looking down at the table is to explain everything to you again, so you stop looking down, and instead admit to yourselves, that unfortunately, in our beautiful country, all power, all that happens is based on endless lies. Im standing here, and ready to stand here any number of times, to prove to you all that I don’t want to - and I won’t - tolerate these lies. Literally lies about everything, from the first word to the last. Im told that Russian interests in Turkmenistan don’t exist, but that the interests of Russians in Ukraine are worth going to war for. I am told that nobody harms Russians in Chechnya. I am told that Gazprom doesn’t steal. When I provide evidence that says Gazprom officials have unregistered property and companies, they say: These dont exist. I say that we’re ready to go to the polls and defeat you in this election. That we’ve registered parties, we’ve done many things. They say, Its all nonsense. We win the elections, and you won’t be participating in them, not because we don’t let you, but because you haven’t filled out your documents correctly.” Everything is built on lies, constantly. And the more convincing our evidence, the more egregious the lies we face. The lies have become not just the modus operandi of the state, but its very essence. We watch speeches by government leaders and we see lies from beginning to end, in massive scale and in details. Yesterday Putin proclaimed We have no palaces. We photograph these palaces - 3 per month! Take a look! We have no oligarchs who are fed by the state,” he says. Yes, here, just look at the documents that say the head of Russian Railways registered half of the corporation into offshore companies in Cyprus and Panama. “No,” they say. Why put up with this lie? Why look down at the table? Sorry to be so philosophical, but life is too short to look down at the table. Before I knew it, I’m pushing 40. Before I know it, I’ll have grandchildren. And then, before we know it, we’re all lying in bed, surrounded by relatives who think to themselves, “I’d rather he give in and leave us already” And at some point we will realize that none of what we did made sense. Why were we looking at the table in silence? The only moments in our lives that matter are when we are doing something right. When we don’t need to look down at the table, but instead lift our gaze and look each other in the eye. Nothing else matters.” I won’t deny, this is a toxic situation for me, and the Kremlin has chosen a clever, toxic plan with which to fight against me. They’re not just trying to put me in jail, but to also attach other innocent people to me. Officers with five children, whose wives I have to look in the eye. I’m sure that many people in the Bolotnaya case were put in prison for no other reason than to spook me and the opposition leaders. Now - my brother. He also has a wife and two children. Now I have to deal with our parents, and - well, you understand. They support me, and I am grateful to my family, but I admit this thing… I admit this though - yes, tell everyone, this is what they try to catch me with - that they are tugging other innocent people along with me like a locomotive. But, and maybe I’m about to say a bad thing, but even taking hostages will not stop me. Because everything in my life has no meaning if I endure endless lies, If I agree with it all just for the sake of being agreeable. I will never agree with the system on which our country is built, because this system aims to rob everyone who is in this room. After all, we’re organized in such a way that there is in fact a junta. 20 people who became billionaires by seizing everything - from state property to oil sales. Then, there are a thousand people who are feeding off the junta - no more than a thousand. Deputies, crooks, etc. There are a few percent of the voting people who don’t like this. And there are millions who simply stare at the table. I will not stop our battle against this junta. I will keep fighting, causing trouble, agitating, somehow, these people who look at the table. Including you. I will not stop it, ever. I don’t regret that I called people to the unauthorized rally. By the way, the rally on Lubyanka, where it all started, was frankly a failure. But I don’t regret for a second that I did it. I don’t regret for a second my actions in the fight against corruption and its investigation... A few years ago, the lawyer, Kobzev, while we were looking at Gazprom or VTB, said something I remember. He said: Alexey, they’re surely going to lock you up. You’re crossing them in a way that they won’t stand for. Sooner or later, you’ll be locked up.” Again, the human mind compartmentalizes all. You can not constantly live with the thought, I’m going to jail. I would force it out of my head, but at the same time I’d be aware of it. I can say that I do not regret any one of my actions. I will continue to encourage people to participate in collective action, including exercising their right to freedom of assembly. And I’ll say it again: people have a legitimate right to revolt against this illegal, corrupt government, this junta, who stole everything, sunk its teeth into it, which pumped trillions of dollars out from our country in the form of oil and gas, and what did we get from it? Nothing. Here I repeat what I said in my last words in the Kirovlesu case: Nothing has changed. We allowed them, while we looked at the table, to rob us. We have allowed them to invest the stolen money somewhere in Europe. We allowed them to turn us into beasts. What have we gotten? How have they compensated you, the table-starers? Not at all. Do you have health care? You don’t have health care. Education? You have no education. Did they give you good roads? They didn’t. Lets ask the bailiffs what the salary of the secretary is. 8,000 rubles per month - maybe 15,000 after fees. I’d be surprised if a bailiff made more than 40,000. It’s a paradoxical situation in which a dozen crooks rob all of us - all of you - every day, while we tolerate it. I will not tolerate it. Again, as many times as it takes to stand a meter outside this cell, or a meter inside the cell - I’ll stand. Some things are more important. I’ll say again: the trick concerning my family, my friends, worked. Remember, they support me in everything, but none of them intend to become political activists. Therefore there is no need to put my brother behind bars for eight years or at all. He wasn’t going to engage in political activity. This has already brought our family a sufficient amount of pain and suffering. There is no need to aggravate it all. As I said, hostage-taking will not stop me. But, nevertheless, I don’t see why the authorities have the need to kill these hostages. I urge absolutely everyone - and maybe it sounds naive, and these words are often taken ironically and with a grin - not live a lie. But nothing else is left. Another way doesn’t exist in our country. I want to thank everyone for their support. I want to encourage all to live not by lies. I want to say that I am absolutely sure that they’ll isolate me, put me in jail, and so on. But someone will take my place. There is nothing unique or complex, in what I did. Everything I did, anyone can do. I’m sure that in the Anti-Corruption Foundation and elsewhere there are people who will continue to do the same, regardless of the decisions of these trials, whose sole purpose is to give the appearance of the rule of law. Thank you.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 18:38:05 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015