To Russia With Love

From top left: “Network” defendants and anti-fascists Andrey Chernov, Igor Shishkin, Arman Sagynbaev, Viktor Filinkov, Ilya Shakurskiy, Mikhail Kulkov, Yuliy Boyarshinov, Maxim Ivankin, Vasiliy Kuksov, and Dmitriy Pchelintsev. 

Russia’s FSB (the successors to the infamous KGB) have a well-earned reputation for the kind of “state security” that only the worst dictatorships would employ.  Aside from the usual corruption, fraud, and racketeering scandals that distinguish it as more of a state-controlled mafia than a legitimate security agency, it’s also been implicated in the assassinations of human rights activists and regime critics both within Russia and abroad and blamed for a series of bombings of Moscow apartment buildings as a false flag operation to win support for Russia’s war against Chechnya.

So when FSB agents arrested ten young anti-fascists in 2017 and accused them of operating a secret terrorist organization called “The Network,” it was obvious that the only terror being perpetrated was by the Russian state against its own people, yet again.

After nearly three years of detention, the systematic denial of both the legal and human rights of the arrestees, and unbelievable forced “confessions” extracted under well-documented torture, the FSB has accomplished its goal of ruining the lives of ten young men and throwing their families into chaos and uncertainty.  Seven of the ten have already received prison sentences of between six and eighteen years.  Meanwhile, fascist gangs roam Russia’s streets, committing brazen assaults and murders with total impunity, while police and the FSB turn a blind eye or assist them.

As anti-fascists, we don’t turn our backs on our fellow anti-fascists when they’re facing repression no matter where they are.  We do whatever we can to support them.  So The International Anti-Fascist Defence Fund has sent a significant contribution to the team providing support to Andrey, Igor, Arman, Viktor, Ilya, Mikhail, Yuliy, Maxim, Vasiliy, and Dmitriy and their families.

If you’d like to help, please check out their support site here for information about how to write to them or donate to their support fund.  If you’d like to make sure The International Anti-Fascist Defence Fund is always ready to provide support to anti-fascists the world over, make a contribution today.

 

Flying The Flag

This flag will get you arrested in Lünenberg. 

See that sweet antifa flag above?  A few months ago, we were selling them to show solidarity with the Rojava revolution and raise money to support them (the green-and-yellow background being a common Kurdish revolutionary motif).  But if you are in Lünenberg, Germany, flying this flag in public will get you arrested, as our friend there found out recently.

What is the crime?  The Lünenberg prosecutor has apparently decided that any and all displays of support for the Rojava revolution or the Kurdish people must actually be displays of support for the banned PKK organization, and is prosecuting our friend accordingly.

This would be a laughably-absurd overreach on the part of the state at any time, but in the context of the recent mass murder of Kurds in the city of Hanau by a right-wing extremist, the chilling effect on any support for the Kurdish people or the fight to establish a society in Rojava that’s clearly more democratic than Germany itself is shameful.

We are fairly certain that the prosecutor cynically assumed our friend would take a plea deal, pay a fine, and be done with it.  But our friend has refused to do so and is going on trial to fight the state’s attempt to criminalize anti-fascism and solidarity with the Kurdish people and the revolution they are fighting for in Rojava.

We weren’t about to let our friend stand alone in this fight and have sent him a contribution to help pay for the legal costs involved in the struggle.  Because if the German state succeeds in banning an anti-fascist symbol synonymous with solidarity with the Kurdish people and the Rojava revolution, what will they ban next?