In a statement posted on his Instagram account, Navalny, 44, claimed that he was not receiving medical attention to what he described as acute pain in his back and both legs and that his requests to see a doctor had been repeatedly ignored. “I have declared a hunger strike demanding that the law be upheld and a doctor of my choice be allowed to visit me,” he wrote.

“I have the right to invite a doctor and receive medication. But they are simply not allowing me to do either. The back pain has spread to my leg. I’ve lost sensation in parts of my right leg and now the left leg too.” Navalny also complained of the hourly checks by prison guards at night, arguing he was being subjected to sleep deprivation torture.

Alexei Navalny: a timeline

With millions of followers across all social media platforms, Navalny is the most prominent face of Russian opposition to President Vladimir Putin. The 44-year-old rose to the scene in the mid-2000s after he began blogging about government corruption and malpractice.

In 2011 whilst giving a radio interview, he famously described Putin’s ruling party, United Russia, as a “party of crooks and thieves“, a popular expression which became a political slogan amongst political activists in Russia and one which continues to underpin the identity of Navalny’s movement today. In 2013, he ran for mayor in the Moscow mayoral election and came in second place, winning 27% of the vote.

In August 2020, Navalny was hospitalized after being poisoned with the Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent and was airlifted to Berlin for emergency medical treatment. In September, the German government confirmed that toxicological tests had been carried out displaying “unequivocal proof of a chemical nerve warfare agent of the Novichok group” – the same nerve agent found in the 2018 Salisbury poison attacks.

Following his return to Moscow from Germany, Navalny became the centre of media attention once again after he was arrested on January 17 for violating the probation terms of a 2014 suspended sentence for embezzlement and subsequently sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison, of which he is now serving at the penal colony in Vladimir Oblast. His arrest was widely seen as politically motivated and triggered a series of mass anti-government protests across the country.

The case against Navalny – his failure to report to police regularly in 2020 – was argued to be ‘absurd‘ by his legal team as the Russian authorities were aware of the fact he had been receiving emergency treatment in Berlin for the nerve agent attack, and thus unable to be physically present in Russia for the latter half of 2020. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has called on Russia to release Alexei Navalny “immediately,” describing the conviction as “arbitrary and manifestly unreasonable“.

What next?

There are legitimate fears Navalny’s condition will continue to deteriorate and that he will be left to die in prison if his medical problems are not attended to.

In an open letter published by medical professionals, demanding that Navalny should get proper care, the prognosis was grim: “We fear for the worst. Leaving a patient in this condition … may lead to severe consequences, including an irreversible, full or partial loss of lower limb functions“.

According to prison authorities, however, the 44-year-old’s condition last week was deemed ‘stable’ and ‘satisfactory’, and that he was receiving necessary treatment.

Covid-19: an increase in state-sponsored repression?

Has Covid-19 amplified oppression and social inequalities? It is certainly an interesting question to ponder. For Agnes Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary-general, this would be a comprehensive ‘yes’.

Callamard has been outspoken about the fact that certain governments are using the pandemic to ‘repress dissent and human rights’ towards political dissidents, and about how the ‘near-normalisation of emergency measures’ has curbed civil liberties.

To keep up with the latest commercial news, click on commercial to get your daily dose.

The post Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny goes on hunger strike in protest over prison treatment appeared first on Relawding.