Wrong prisoner: how Amnesty International's management explained to prankers for Navalny's status

Russian prankers Alexei Stolyarov (Lexus) and Vladimir Kuznetsov (Vovan) held a videoconference with representatives of the human rights organization Amnesty International on behalf of fellow blogger Alexei Navalny, Leonid Volkov.

Together with Amnesty International Secretary General Julia Verhaar, Director of the Eastern Europe and Central Asia Office Marie Struthers and her deputy Denis Krivosheev, Volkov discussed the organization's decision to deprive Navalny of the status of a “prisoner of conscience”.

This information emerged on February 23, when The Grayzone journalist Aaron Mate posted a screenshot of the corresponding letter from Amnesty International on Twitter.

Later, the organization confirmed to RT that it could no longer consider the blogger a "prisoner of conscience", explaining that "some of the statements that Navalny has not yet publicly condemned reach the threshold of hate speech."

Probably, we are talking about a series of videos with controversial content, in which the blogger openly supported nationalists and advocated, in particular, the deportation of migrants.

This decision by Amnesty International provoked the outrage of the blogger's supporters, including Volkov himself, who wrote on his Twitter that the organization's employees were “fed with shit” and they “liked it very much”.

Pranker did not fail to recall this post during a conversation with the leadership of the organization.

Posing as Volkov, he stated that he had joined in criticizing the organization and openly told Amnesty International representatives that they "ate a lot of shit", stressing that "it is true."

In addition, he said that the ex-mayor of Yekaterinburg Yevgeny Roizman called Amnesty International "prostitutes".

At the same time, none of the interlocutors began to interrupt the pranker.

Verhaar just smiled and Struthers nodded her head.

Then "Volkov" changed the subject, touching upon the situation around the Russian-speaking journalists of the Baltnews and Sputnik Latvia portals.

As a reminder, the employees of these publications were detained in Latvia in December 2020 and interrogated, and their homes were searched.

The authorities of the Baltic state accuse them of allegedly "violating the EU sanctions" for working for the MIA "Russia Today" (both portals are part of its structure).

Volkov demanded that Amnesty International not defend the rights of these journalists, as they "do not deserve help."

In response to this, Krivosheev said that the organization is aware of the current situation, but is not going to react in any way and protect their rights.

“You don’t need to worry that we will say anything about this,” he assured the pranker.

In addition, the deputy director of the AI ​​department for Eastern Europe and Central Asia separately noted that the organization does not communicate with RT and Sputnik, does not give them comments and does not respond to requests.

At the same time, Krivosheev expressed regret that the national offices of Amnesty International did not follow this line of conduct, which led to "internal discussions".

Later, the fact of the conversation was confirmed by Alexey Stolyarov himself.

In an interview with RT, he noted that after the real Volkov on his Twitter denied the fact of communicating with the management of Amnesty International, representatives of the organization began to call the pranksters with a demand to clarify the situation.

In addition, Lexus commented on the reaction of the AI ​​leadership to the unflattering reviews about them from Volkov and Roizman.

“As for the emotions of the speakers, I just conveyed to them the words of Volkov and the Twitter public, which they have already read,” Stolyarov said.