The Russian opponent Alexei Navalny, detained in a penal colony, announced a hunger strike demanding access to health care and denouncing the “torture” he suffers from sleep deprivation. “I declare a hunger strike to demand the application of the law and to let an external doctor visit me,” Navalnyj wrote on his Instagram profile.
“Russia in 2021: to receive the medical treatment you are entitled to by law, you must go on a hunger strike,” the spokesperson commented on Twitter. Kira Jarmish, under house arrest and officially without internet access.
Russia, fears for the “life and health” of the opponent Navalnyj in prison
by Rosalba Castelletti
In recent days, the anti-corruption activist’s collaborators and lawyers had raised the alarm saying they feared for his health and his life. “His health is obviously extremely problematic for me,” he told indie TV Dozhd the lawyer Olga Mikhailova.
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Pain in the back and leg
The opponent allegedly suffered from “severe pain” in his back and right leg and last week underwent an MRI scan at a “public hospital” without receiving a diagnosis. A neurologist would have prescribed ibuprofen alone, a common anti-inflammatory.
“The back pain has moved to the leg. Areas of my right leg and now my left leg have lost sensation. Seriously, it’s boring,” Navalnyj continues today in his statement, adding that he spends his time lying on the bed. .
The authorities, he denounced, also refuse to give him any other books apart from the Bible. “The other inmates just say: Aleksei, I’m sorry, but we’re only afraid (…) The life of a prisoner is worth less than a pack of cigarettes”, writes Navalnyj.
“They deprive me of sleep, it’s a use de facto of sleep deprivation as torture “, wrote Navalnyj in recent days, specifying that he was woken” eight times a night “by his captors and asking to” receive treatment “.
The Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) of the Vladimir region, near Moscow, where Navalnyj is imprisoned, had denied health problems by assuring that medical examinations had been carried out and that Navalnyj’s condition had been “considered stable and satisfactory”. “We do not follow the case, the monitoring of prisoners’ health is the responsibility of the prison authorities”, said the Kremlin spokesman. Dmitry Peskov.
The Pokrov penal colony
Navalnyj is being held in the Pokrov penal colony, 100 kilometers east of Moscow, one of the toughest prisons in the Federation. The opponent had compared him to a “concentration camp” and his daily life to that of a Stormtrooper in the “Russian Star Wars remake”.
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Navalny also said on Monday that he received eight warnings in just two weeks of detention for “getting out of bed 10 minutes” too early or for “refusing to participate” in the mandatory morning exercises and therefore risks being transferred to a cell. of isolation.
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Novichok poisoning
Forty-four-year-old Navalny survived a Novichok poisoning last August. Ended in a coma and transferred to Germany, after five months of convalescence, he returned to Moscow last January, but was arrested as soon as he landed. Sentenced in February to two and a half years in prison for a fraud case dating back to 2014 judged “politically motivated” by the European Court of Human Rights, he has been detained since the beginning of March in the Pokrovskaya Ik-2 penal colony, 100 kilometers from the Russian capital.
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