{"id":150499,"date":"2021-05-05T14:02:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-05T14:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=194761"},"modified":"2021-05-05T14:02:00","modified_gmt":"2021-05-05T14:02:00","slug":"i-was-never-afraid-in-the-face-of-criminal-charges-russian-teen-protester-stands-defiant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/05\/05\/i-was-never-afraid-in-the-face-of-criminal-charges-russian-teen-protester-stands-defiant\/","title":{"rendered":"‘I Was Never Afraid’: In The Face Of Criminal Charges, Russian Teen Protester Stands Defiant"},"content":{"rendered":"
As President Vladimir Putin’s government intensifies its crackdown on all forms of dissent, many Russians who oppose him have found inspiration in the closing remarks Moscow State University student Olga Misik made last week at her trial.<\/p>\n
Writer Nikolai Kononov posted on Twitter <\/a><\/strong>that the speech Misik made in court on April 29 “will end up in school textbooks.”<\/p>\n St. Petersburg artist Yuly Rybakov shared Misik’s remarks in full on Facebook<\/a><\/strong> and wrote: “With such children, Russia does have a future!”<\/p>\n The student’s defiant speech joins the ranks of the impassioned courtroom addresses of dissidents that have characterized the two decades of Putin’s rule and go back at least as far as the Soviet era.<\/p>\n Misik and two other young defendants, Ivan Vorobyevsky and Igor Basharimov, are charged with vandalizing government buildings. In a gesture of support for those they consider political prisoners, they hung banners on a railing outside a Moscow district court on August 8, 2020, and then splattered red paint on a security booth outside the Prosecutor-General’s Office building. Prosecutors claim they caused 3,500 rubles ($47) in damages.<\/p>\n Defense attorneys say that the documents provided by prosecutors concerning the alleged damages were falsified<\/a><\/strong> and that no harm was caused by the water-soluble paint.<\/p>\n Under the charges, they could face up to three years in prison when Moscow’s Tverskoi District Court delivers its decision on May 11. Prosecutors, however, have asked for two years of “restricted liberty” for Misik and one year and 10 months for the other defendants, according to the independent OVD-Info monitoring agency<\/a><\/strong>. During the trial, the defendants have been under a limited form of house arrest, unable to leave home between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., to approach within 10 meters of government buildings, to attend public events, or to use means of communication.<\/p>\n Misik, who turned 19 in January, has long been actively involved in protests against Putin’s government. She attracted national attention in August 2019 during a protest against the government’s decision to disqualify virtually all the opposition candidates running for seats on the Moscow City Duma.<\/p>\n Misik protested by reading the Russian Constitution out loud to a heavily armed phalanx of riot police in body armor \u2013 an act that for many distilled the relationship between the Russian state and the people in recent years.<\/p>\n