The Final Statement of Defendant Natalya Kocheva in Birobidzhan
In her final statement, Natalya spoke about her faith in a loving God, which shaped her moral convictions. She emphasized that she did not commit any extremist acts and asked the court to acquit her.
Transcript:
Your Honor, Yuliya Viktorovna! I would like to speak about the opposite of violence — about the love of God and how I understand it. This will help to provide a fuller and more objective picture of my case.
The love of God is not an abstract concept. It is something you can touch, virtually at any moment. Our bodies, our families, delicious food, the sea and the sand, mountains and trees — all these are materialized expressions of the love of God. Amid the day-to-day calculations of life, we may overlook the most important thing: our life is a gift from God. We may overlook it because to look is not the same as to see, to hear is not the same as to listen.
For example, the length of the uncoiled DNA in a single cell of our body is about 2 meters. If you extract DNA from the trillions of cells in the body and connect their ends, the total length of this chain would be, by some estimates, 1,340 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun. To travel that distance at the speed of light would take about 185 hours. Just think about that.
Inside the nucleus of every cell are thousands of genes. These are individual units of heredity that control the cell, and as a result, determine some of our traits. Some genes determine our blood type; others are responsible for hair structure, eye color, and so on. Each cell contains a miniature plan made up of genes — a code that includes all the instructions necessary for the “building” and “repair” of our bodies, as well as for regulating its functions. Who wrote this entire program code spanning billions of kilometers? Unfortunately, many people do not care who did it. But to me it is obvious that this was the hand of the living God.
Jehovah is a person who possesses great love for people and everything He created. God did more than establish standards of good and evil; He instilled a desire for love and justice in the very nature of humans. With our mother’s milk, we absorb the sense that stealing, lying, and insulting …