Russian prison officials are threatening to start imprisoning Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, his team said on Monday after losing eight kilograms (18 pounds) since starting a hunger strike.
“Given the seriousness of the hunger strike, the government is threatening to start using force every day,” Navalny’s team said in a post on its Twitter account.
Navalny, who last week said he had a cough and fever, was reportedly brought back from the hospital to the prison barracks.
“They still allow a doctor not to see him,” he said.
The 44-year-old opposition politician now weighs just 77 kilograms (169 pounds), up from 85 kilograms (187 pounds) when he began the March 31 hunger strike.
Navalny, who is 189 centimeters (six feet two inches) tall, had already lost significant weight in prison before beginning the hunger strike. He weighed 93 kilograms (205 pounds) when he entered the factory in February.
The anti-corruption campaigner, who barely survived a poisoning with nerve agent Novichok last August, began refusing to argue food about what he said was a lack of proper medical treatment in prison for severe back pain and numbness in his legs.
President Vladimir Putin’s best-known opponent, Navalny, was arrested in mid-January on his return from Germany to Russia, where he was treated for poisoning, and sentenced in February to two and a half years in prison on charges of old embezzlement. .
Members of his defense team, who visited him in his penal colony in the city of Pokrov 100 kilometers east of Moscow last week, said he was also losing sensation in his hands.
Attorney Olga Mikhailova said an MRI scan showed Navalny had two herniated discs in his back, as well as a bulging disc.
– ‘Innocent man tortured’ –
While Russians across the country celebrated the 60th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s historic first spaceflight, Navalny’s team urged Russians not to forget the situation of the opposition politician despite the great commemoration.
“Yes, the cosmonautical day is cool, of course,” tweeted ally Lyubov Sobol. “But an innocent man is currently being tortured in front of the whole country.”
Navalny’s lawyers and allies are demanding that he be transferred to a regular hospital. The Kremlin has said Navalny is not entitled to any special treatment.
Navalny has been a thorn in the side of the Kremlin for decades, investigating corruption among officials and leading large-scale protests throughout Russia, backed by a regional network.
His team launched a new campaign to secure his release and announced plans to plan ‘the biggest protest of modern Russia’.
The team said they would set a date for the protest once 500,000 fans had registered on a website. As of Monday, nearly 420,000 people had signed up.
The team, which is regularly investigated by law enforcement and arrested, also opened a new office in the North Caucasus republic of Dagestan on Sunday.
But on Monday, the head of the regional network, Leonid Volkov, wrote on Twitter that “both his employees went missing”.
Meanwhile, Navalny’s personal doctor, Anastasia Vasilyeva, was fined 180,000 rubles ($ 2,325) for violating public order, advocates of the Agora rights group representing her said Monday.
Vasilyeva, who heads the government-affiliated Alliance of Doctors, traveled to Navalny’s penal colony last week to demand proper medical treatment.
She and eight other protesters were detained by police and last week a court imposed a week-long prison sentence on four of them.
as-emg / dl