When I was a kid the news seemed to buzz with stories of political prisoners, dissidents or hostages. The media, perhaps in concert with groups like Amnesty International performed a function of keeping a spotlight on these people, often regardless of their political leaning. I can recall names like Nelson Madella, Steve Biko, Terry Waite, Bobby Sands, around whose fate world history seemed to pivot.

Today there feels a cold, indifferent silence around the fate of unlawfully and arbitrarily detained people around the world. I think this is one of the most profound changes/failings of today's (social) media and justice systems. And I think to some degree it's systematic and deliberate - to disempower martyrs and figureheads. It applies at home too, as there are many political prisoners in the USA [1] and the UK treatment of Julian Assange is been shameful.

I think MLK nailed the climate today eben better than the 1960s; "In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends"

[1] https://afgj.org/politicalprisonersusa

I don’t think it’s deliberate. The U.S. media is much more inwardly focused now. How often have you heard the name Breonna Taylor? We no longer have global hegemony. We can’t change Russia. We can maybe change some domestic police forces.

I would remark that only two of the men you list survived their imprisonment.

The world has a limited attention span, and often a short one.

The spotlight was always on people who had some exemplary role to play in the ideological conflict of the day. Mandela was a figurehead of the anti-apartheid movement, which drew both praise as well as condemnation. He was considered a terrorist and communist by a non-trivial amount of the US well into the 2000s after all, very exciting stuff.

Navalny or flat out most dissidents today have no ideological relevance, and nobody cares about 'ordinary' dissidents, who vastly outnumber pivotal historical figures. It's not a converted effort that prevents the media from reporting about jailed journalists in Turkmenistan, it's that nobody reads it.

Pussy Riot was popular for a minute because the media could put some hot naked women on the cover of their newspapers, but that's about it.

We have our own embarrassments, where arguably we ought to be able to do something about them, unlike poor Navalny.

The US is still trying to extradite Julian Assange, and the UK is still imprisoning and torturing him. Barrett Brown was imprisoned in the US for publishing a URL. Chelsea Manning keeps getting thrown back in prison. The Espionage Act is now routinely used against legitimate journalism.

What can we do here?

I followed the trial as much as I could, and I was surprised at how such a farce of a trial didn't have much internal reactions.

It amazes me that the Russian people seemingly have such low regard for their own system, while so little seems to happen with regards to change.

> It amazes me that the Russian people seemingly have such low regard for their own system

But Navalny isn't "their own system". Vast majority of russians heard of him but he has done nothing useful. All his activity is just self-promoting. By the way, in the past there was a figure with similar views: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduard_Limonov

Had there been such a high profile court case in most western democracies there would have been outrage.

Like in case of Snowden and Assange, right?

Nowhere near the same.

Didn't he voluntarily return to Russia when Russia explicitly said he'd go to jail? I dunno... that isn't a compelling story for what I should pay attention.

This seems callous.

Even if he could have avoided it in this specific instance, no doubt he's suffering now.

It is because he returned despite knowing he'll be imprisoned that we should now help. Those who "happily" avoided imprisonment by staying away don't need that help as much.

It's silly how the West doesn't have political will to, say, arrest western holdings of kleptocrats yet has enough appetite to jail people like Assange. It's easier to go after those without fat wallets and connections in power, and we're all worse because of that.

It's not callous, Navalny receives the amount of media attention that he does because he is relevant to western interests in Russia. He does not garner nearly as much support as it may seem among the Russian people because he is a hardline right wing politician which is something Russians have always avoided. Also, after Yeltsin most Russians avoid any politicians with western backing for obvious historical reasons. Navalny is a propaganda tool for the west and nothing more, he is not a relevant replacement for Putin nor is he someone the west should really be supportive of unless they are on the payroll of major defense contractors. How can westerners be supportive of anti racist policies at home while supporting a racist nationalist abroad without being hypocritical?

There's a lot going on in Russia just now.