[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 50 (Wednesday, March 25, 2015)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E412]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     THE TRAGIC KILLING OF RUSSIAN OPPOSITION LEADER BORIS NEMTSOV

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                           HON. MARCY KAPTUR

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, March 25, 2015

  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, last month, while many of us were working 
late to prevent the shutdown of our own Department of Homeland 
Security, a tragedy occurred in Moscow.
  Boris Nemtsov, famed leader of Russia's opposition, was fatally shot 
four times in the back near St. Basil's Cathedral and the Kremlin. He 
was 55 years old. That night the fateful image of his body lying dead, 
on a bridge, facing the Kremlin, sent shivers across our world.
  Shivers of sorrow. Shivers of anger. Shivers of cold remembrance of a 
place with no room for real liberty. No free speech. No tolerance for 
contrary opinions. No experience of what it means to live in an open 
society.
  Russia is a nation that spans eleven time zones. It holds enough 
nuclear arms to obliterate life on Earth. How sad that such a nation is 
still unsafe for a peaceful advocate of freedom and representative 
governance.
  Boris Nemtsov was killed just hours before a non-violent 
demonstration he was preparing to lead, protesting Russia's illegal 
invasion of Ukraine. What courage he showed in speaking for Ukraine, a 
young and energetic nation seeking peace and opportunity for its 
people. Ukraine is a sister to Russia and has not deserved the 
brutality that Russia has heaped upon her over the past year. During 
that short span, more than 6,000 people have died in the fight for an 
independent Ukraine.
  Mr. Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister of Russia, a vice 
premier, fought every day for a more open society in his home country. 
He championed reform ever since the collapse of the old Soviet order 
twenty years ago. It was a valiant, if often lonely, struggle against a 
vast and oppressive totalitarian state. More and more, he must have 
felt the creeping shadow of his own mortality due to the danger in 
which he placed himself.
  Boris Nemtsov was assassinated by cowards lurking in the shadows as 
he crossed a bridge in front of the Kremlin. The murderers, driven to 
such a craven and despicable act, were too small and too afraid to let 
his voice rise.
  As I read the news of his tragic fate, I see the first threads of a 
history that will hold him up as a leader of unparalleled courage and 
unprecedented faith in his people. This is remarkable in the face of 
one of the most persistent tyrannies in the world.
  Boris Nemtsov's life is prophetic, like Alexander Solzhenitsyn and 
others who have suffered to move Russia out of its historical 
imprisonment of liberty.
  No part of our world has suffered more in the last century than 
Russia and the subjugated Soviet territories, as Dr. Timothy Snyder 
recounts in his extraordinary book ``Bloodlands.''
  In the middle of Europe in the middle of the 20th century, the Nazi 
and Soviet regimes murdered some 14 million people . . . all victims of 
murderous policy rather than casualties of war.
  Yet not a single one of the 14 million murdered was a soldier on 
active duty. Most were women, children, and the aged; none were bearing 
weapons; many had been stripped of their possessions, including their 
clothes.
  The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights has called the situation 
a ``merciless devastation of civilian lives and infrastructure.''
  His report points out that heavy weaponry and foreign fighters 
continue to pour in from Russia and that the conflict has 
``dramatically deteriorated'' in the past two months.
  In 2010 Nemtsov founded the Coalition for Russia without Lawlessness 
and Corruption, a party notable not only for its ambitious name but 
also because it was refused registration as a party by the Kremlin. In 
recent years, as a leader of the Russian opposition, Nemtsov had 
written several highly credible reports exposing corruption at the 
highest levels of the Russian government.
  Our own Gettysburg Address, one of the most revered statements in 
American history, says, in part, ``that from these honored dead we take 
increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full 
measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall 
not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new 
birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for 
the people, shall not perish from the earth.''
  This is a message I now commend to the people of Russia: let the 
sacrifice of Boris Nemtsov inspire your own devotion to the cause of 
freedom.
  Because of Boris Nemtsov, millions inside Russia can imagine liberty, 
a more democratic society, and a life better than the one now permitted 
to them. Ordinary citizens can make that life for themselves if they 
are only allowed real representative governance. Nemtsov strove to give 
every Russian a chance at that better life, even from inside the belly 
of a frozen whale. We honor his ideals and his sacrifice.

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