Yulia Navalnaya accuses the Russian president of mocking Christianity as officers refuse at hand over the stays to the household.
Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of opposition chief Alexey Navalny, has referred to as on Russian authorities to return his physique for burial, accusing President Vladimir Putin of mocking Orthodox Christian values and “torturing” his corpse .
“Give us my husband's physique,” Navalnaya stated in a video posted Saturday, including that she wished to offer him a conventional Orthodox funeral.
“You tortured him alive, and now you proceed to torture him useless. You make enjoyable of the stays of the useless,” he stated in a message to Putin.
Navalny, a outstanding opponent of Putin, died final week in a distant maximum-security Arctic penal colony the place he was serving a 19-year sentence on extremism costs.
Authorities say he died of pure causes. They refused at hand over his stays to the household even 9 days later.
Navalny's mom, Lyudmila Navalnaya, stated investigators pressured her to bury her son in “secret” in a personal ceremony with out mourning.
An official stated she ought to settle for her requests as a result of Navalny's physique was already decomposing, she stated.
Navalny's aides stated authorities threatened to bury him within the jail colony the place he died except his household agreed to their situations.
“They need to take me to the tip of the cemetery to a contemporary grave and say, 'Right here is your son,'” stated his mom in a video posted Thursday on YouTube. “I don't agree with that “.
“How low will you sink?”
“No true Christian may ever do what Putin is doing now with Alexey's physique,” his widow stated within the video, as she questioned Putin's often-professed Christian religion.
“What are you doing along with his corpse? How low will you stoop to mock the person you murdered?”, he requested and stated: “We already know that Putin's religion was false. However now we see it extra clearly than ever.”
The Russian chief is usually depicted within the church, immersed in ice water to have a good time the Epiphany and go to the holy websites in Russia. He promoted what he referred to as “conventional values” with out which, he as soon as stated, “society degrades,” and boasted of his closeness to the Russian Orthodox Church.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denounced allegations – together with by world leaders – that Putin was concerned in Navalny's demise, calling them “completely baseless and insolent accusations in opposition to the pinnacle of the Russian state”.
Musician Nadya Tolokonnikova, who turned extensively identified after spending practically two years in jail for participating in a 2012 protest along with her band Pussy Riot at Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral, launched a video accusing Putin of of hypocrisy.
“We have been imprisoned for allegedly trampling on conventional values. However nobody tramples on conventional Russian values greater than you, Putin, your officers and your clergymen who pray for all of the homicide you do, yr after yr, day after day,” stated Tolokonnikova, who lives overseas. “Putin, having a conscience, offers his mom the physique of his son.”
Tolokonnikova was one in all a number of cultural icons who posted movies calling on Russian authorities to return Navalny's physique to his household.
Critics say authorities worry a funeral may flip right into a large-scale public demonstration of help for the opposition chief.
The funeral of Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Putin ally turned rival and founding father of the Wagner mercenary group who died final August, was shrouded in secrecy and his physique was buried on the outskirts of St. Petersburg away from the limelight of the media.
Whereas the Russian media gave little area to the information of Navalny's demise, individuals thronged the streets of cities throughout the nation to pay tribute to the opposition chief. Police arrested not less than 400 individuals within the first 24 hours after information of his demise, in keeping with protest monitoring group OVD-Information.
