Daily US Times: Russia’s Alexey Navalny says he is going on a hunger strike to protest against prison officials’ refusal to allow him access to proper medical care. Navalny’s team said this in his official Instagram page on Wednesday.
Navalny said: “I have the right to call a doctor and get medications. They give me neither one nor the other. The back pain has moved to the leg. Parts of my right leg and now of my left leg have lost sensitivity. Jokes aside, but this is already annoying.”
The main Russian opposition leader informed the head of penal colony No.2 in Pokrov, in the Vladimir region, in a handwritten letter that he was going on a hunger strike. Images of the letter were also shared in his Instagram.
Navalny said in his Instagram post: “I announce a hunger strike with a demand for the law to be obeyed and that I’m seen by a doctor from outside. So I’m hungry, but so far I still have two legs.”
Last week, one of Navalny’s lawyers said that the opposition figure had been suffering from acute back pain that had affected his walking ability, and his condition was being exacerbated by alleged “torture by sleep deprivation.”
Navalny echoed these claims on Wednesday, saying he was being tortured in the jail.
Navalny, a vocal critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said: “Instead of medical assistance, I am tortured with sleep deprivation (they wake me up 8 times a night), and the administration persuading the activist convicts (aka “goats”) to intimidate ordinary convicts so that they do not clean around my bed.”
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