At the beginning of this conversation, I referenced our mutual friend Irwin Cotler, who said that the worst nightmare for a political prisoner is being forgotten. Before I was imprisoned myself, while I was advocating for other Russian political prisoners, I used that phrase often, but honestly I didn't really understand it until I experienced it myself.
When a totalitarian regime or a dictatorship arrests and imprisons a political opponent, the goal is not just to punish that person and put them in jail. The goal is also to demoralize the person, isolate them, make them believe that everyone has forgotten them, that what happened doesn't matter and that they are there for nothing. In fact, that's what the Putin regime is trying to do with all the people who are in prison.
I can't tell you how important it was for me to know, through the letters I received and from what my lawyers said when they visited me, that it was not true, in fact, and that the world had not forgotten. It's important to know that the free world, the democratic world, is expressing solidarity with all those people in Russia who are imprisoned by Putin's dictatorship for speaking out against the regime or the war. When I talked about the exchange that took place in August 2024, the most powerful message for me from western countries, democratic countries, was to include not only their own citizens in that exchange, even here at home, but also Russian political prisoners.
I don't have enough words in any language I know to express how important it is not only for the democratic world to support political prisoners in totalitarian countries, but to do so publicly. Speaking publicly is the most important defence for someone who is imprisoned for years and years by a totalitarian regime without ever having committed a crime, just because of their political views or religious values.
As I said a few minutes ago, of all the provisions of Bill C‑219, the most important and most personal for me is precisely that one. It's the requirement for public reports—and I want to emphasize the word “public”—as regards political prisoners in totalitarian regimes, so that it's impossible for those dictatorships to make political prisoners believe that the world doesn't know what's going on and that the world has forgotten them.