A-Infos (en) Anarchistische Groep Amsterdam» - In the memory of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova

Twelve years ago, Russian human rights advocate and journalist Stanislav 
Markelov, and journalist Anastasia Baburova, were shot and killed by a Russian 
ultra-nationalists. ---- On 30th November 2008 Stas made a speech at the meeting 
against political terror in Moscow. It describes perfectly Stas himself and the 
overall situation in Russia at that time. ---- I'm in a strange position. It 
turns out that I'm the lawyer of all the people who wound up in these awful 
stories. And I'm tired. ---- I'm tired of coming across the names of people I 
know on the crime pages. I'm tired because a week before what happened I was at 
Mikhail Beketov's house. And he complained to me that he was alone against the 
world. ---- And that turned to be true.

I'm tired of opening up a criminal case and seeing that the first point in the 
list of charges is that the accused is a member of the antifa movement. People 
not only have charges filed against them for this, they are arrested and put in 
jail, just like[Alexei]Osinov right now.

I'm tired of reading the crime pages and scanning lists of victims. This is how I 
found out about[Fyodor]Filatov, who was recently murdered outside his home. This 
is no longer a job, but a question of survival. Whereas Mikhail Beketov needs 
blood right now, all of us need protection. We need protection from Nazis. We 
need protection from the mafia-like authorities. We even need protection from the 
law enforcement agencies, who often simply wait on them hand and foot. We all 
need protection.

And we know perfectly well that, besides ourselves, no one is ever going to give 
us this protection. Not God, not the Tsar, not the law, no one. Only we 
ourselves. And only when we manage to march shoulder to shoulder will we be able 
to protect each other, only then we will make a breakthrough. I hope that this 
will happen. Otherwise we've gathered here in vain.

Speech by Stanislav Markelov. Rally against Political Terror. Moscow, November 
30, 2008.
Only two month after this speech, on 19 January, Stas was murdered. It's hard to 
make a list of all the things that he did for the left movement in Russia.

He took part in human rights conferences and social forums, trying to unite the 
ideas of human rights and social justice.

He defended leftist and anti-fascist activists throughout Russia.

He defended environmentalists, whose protest camps were attacked by local 
administrations, law enforcement officials, and legal and illegal armed units.

He defended trade union activists.

He defended members of the Belorussian opposition.

He was practically the only Russian lawyer who worked on controversial cases in 
Chechnya.

He represented victims of the Nord-Ost and Blagoveshchensk terrorist attacks.

He and Anastasia Baburova were killed in the middle of the day in the very center 
of Moscow.

Someone might say that Nastya was just a random victim, but we would not agree on 
that. Her ideals and her choices led her to that place in that time. She was a 
brave person who combined activism with journalism. That day, after she heard the 
shots targeting Markelov, she could have run and save herself, but she decided to 
try to stop the attacker. She was killed.

Stanislav Markelov as a lawyer was involved in so many hot cases that at first it 
was hard to say exactly who might have pulled the trigger, but at the end he was 
killed by Nazis.

Stas and Nastya were killed by a neo-nazi organization called BORN. This 
organization was formed by people who had the desire to kill, and they made it 
real. As a result, BORN murdered multiple enemies of their imaginary happy white 
pride future.

It's obvious that such a right-wing radicals do not come from nothing. They need 
the basis to grow from. And this basis is social injustice. As long as we have 
rich and poor, people will be angry. Those in power try to turn our anger against 
refugees and immigrants as an easy target. But it will never solve anything, it 
only bring more problems and pain.

We need to turn our anger on people in power, on those who start wars and destroy 
out planet for profits. To stop racist killings, we need to put an end to capitalism.

Stas and Nastya both knew that. Everything they did was for that. And eventually 
they gave their lives for that. Now it's up to us to make the rest of the world 
see the bigger picture, to give people the knowledge so they can fight for 
themselves everyday.

Let's not forget Stas and Nastya's struggle.

Anti-fascism is an action.

To remember is to fight.

https://www.agamsterdam.org/in-the-memory-of-stanislav-markelov-and-anastasia-baburova/
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