Russian opponent Alexei Navalny goes on hunger strike in prison

Russian opponent Alexei Navalny, incarcerated in a penal colony, announced on Wednesday that he was starting a hunger-strike, to report the lack of access to medical care and what is “Tortured by sleep deprivation.”

“I declare a hunger strike to demand that the law be applied and that a doctor come to see me”, wrote on his Navalni Instagram account, claiming to suffer from back and leg pain.

The opponent, who is serving two and a half years in prison, had already denounced Prison officials last week ignored her insistent requests to be examined by an independent doctor for “sharp back pain”, which has spread to his right leg and prevents him from walking.

“I have the right to call a doctor and get medicine. They don’t give me either. The back pain moved to the leg. The areas of the right leg and now the left have lost sensation. Jokes aside, but it’s already annoying, ”he reiterated on Wednesday.

His wife, Yulia Naválnaya, took to Russian President Vladimir Putin on social media to ask release the politician “immediately”, although the Kremlin recommended him to go to the prison service.

Members of the Prisoners’ Social Patronage visited Navalny last weekend and concluded that the adversary “walks unaided”, although they established that “his leg was hurting” and confirmed that he had asked them for help to receive injections “in order to relieve the pain”.

Monday, Navalny also reported on social media that he had already received ten reprimands since he was sent over a month ago to the Vladimir region, first to a preventive prison and then to a penitentiary.

Such reprimands could lead to the confinement of the adversary in a punitive cell.

Navalny, 44, called up “Concentration Camp” at Pokrov Prison No. 2 that he entered on March 11 to serve his sentence, which the opposition and the West consider to be fabricated.

The adversary accuses Putin of having ordered his assassination at the Federal Security Service (FSB, former KGB).

REQUEST FOR HALF A THOUSAND PHYSICIANS

Navalny’s hunger strike comes a day later half a thousand doctors will sign petition demanding that the Kremlin and prison services provide immediate medical assistance to the leader of the Russian opposition.

Doctors said authorities should “Create the conditions for the normalization of Navalny’s state of health” and believed that the deterioration of the opponent’s health could be due to “Both to complications from poisoning (with chemical agent Novichok) took place last August as new diseases as part of an unfinished rehabilitation process ”.

“It is possible that leaving the patient, in this case, without help, even surgical, could lead to the development of serious sequelae, which would include the irreversible loss, partial or total, of the functions of the lower limbs ”, they warned.

The petition emphasizes that “leaving a person with acute pain who is behind bars without appropriate anesthetic measures this can represent not only a violation of their rights but, directly, torture ”.

Doctors, who also believe Navalny should not be in jail, have asked “Humanitarian grounds” that the opponent can be examined by a doctor they trust and they also recommended the presence of German specialists from the Charité clinic in Berlin who treated the politician in August.

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