The extreme measure of freedom

How political prisoners in Russia withstand the hunger strike and what it leads to

On March 31, Alexei Navalny announced a hunger strike, since, according to him, he had no other method of struggle for the opportunity to receive qualified medical care in the colony. The associates of Navalny Leonid Volkov and Ivan Zhdanov assure that Navalny always considered the hunger strike an extreme measure.

“When others were starving, Alexei said that he could not imagine that he himself would go. He called this a radical political gesture that can only be done when he is ready to go to the end, ”the head of the FBK investigation department wrote on Twitter (we are forced to report that the Ministry of Justice was organized in the list of“ foreign agents ” - ed.) Maria singers.

Associate Professor of the Department of Nervous Diseases and Neurosurgery of Sechenov University, neurologist Alexei Barinov , who demanded to allow Navalny to examine and prescribe, in a conversation with “open media” that a hunger strike could lead a policy to a coma.

What is political hunger strikes leading to: concessions from the side of the regime or revenge? "New" recalls the most high -profile cases of hungry protest in the history of modern Russia.

Alexander Shestun
Almost at the same time with Navalny-March 25-the former head of the Serpukhov district of the Moscow Region Alexander Shestun, sentenced to 15 years in a maximum security colony on charges of corruption, began a hunger strike "because of repression from the leadership of the Russian Federation of the SIZO-1 of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia." This happened after the Shestun was sent to the penalty area (schizo). The ex-official complained about unbearable conditions of detention, the lack of full-fledged lighting, and a loudly working radio, a ban on the opportunity to sit on the bed during the day and torture. In addition, the Public Committee “Freedom to Shestun” reported that the leadership of the Tver SIZO-1 as a provocation was placed in a camera where the ex-official, a young man who “immediately outlined his status“ offended ”sits.

Shestun stopped the hunger strike on March 30, since all his requirements were fulfilled: the “offended” was deposited from the camera, and the Shestun himself was transferred to the prison hospital of Torzhok.

“They fulfilled his requirements so easily, because they knew that the hospital was terrible and everyone was running from there,” said Vlad Rusin, chairman of the Freedom of Freedom, the Freedom Committee.

“MSCh-69 FSIN is a concentration camp with an even more cruel regime than the ominous Tver prison. The patients who arrived were held for more than two hours, and among them there were severe patients, while Vertukhay was engaged in a search of things. [...] mattresses and pillows - since the time of the Gulag have still rotted. How shamelessly 250 billion rubles of the FSIN budget are stolen! There are no medical equipment, except for thermometers and tonometers. They don’t even dream about MRI and CT. No elementary drugs. The diet laid down in diabetes is not issued. All warm things were taken away by betraying a robe. It’s cold in the cell, but even the thermal underwear set was not allowed to take it, as in Kartser, ” says Facebook on a post on the Shestuna page.

He said that he was placed in the psychiatric department and, although he has diabetes, a glucometer was taken away. The next day, he said that he was completely isolated from other prisoners, and those who talk to him were brutally punished.

In addition, Shestun, describing what was happening in a prison hospital, recalled how he was “forcibly fed during a long hunger strike in“ sailor silence ”, tied with ropes to the bed and pumping up heavy psychotropic.”

Oleg Sentsov
The hunger strike of the Ukrainian director Oleg Sentsov was perhaps one of the worst prison protests of the 2010s. Sentsov, sentenced to 20 years in a maximum security colony on charges of creating a terrorist community in Crimea, demanded to free all Ukrainian political prisoners in the Russian Federation and lasted 145 days. Sentsov did not include his name in the list of political faces that need to be released.

On October 5, 2018, the director forced to stop the hunger strike, since the FSIN was ready to begin for compulsory feeding.

“Due to the critical state of my health, as well as the pathological changes in the internal organs that have begun in the very near future, the use of forced meals is planned for me. My opinion is no longer taken into account. [...] 145 days of struggle, minus 20 kg of weight, plus a torn body, but the goal has not been achieved, ”he wrote.

Sentsov’s lawyer Dmitry Dinze a few years later recalls that the jailers tried in various ways to “lure” the prisoner from the hunger strike and provoked him. “Those who are starving are immediately separated from the total mass: if a person was sitting in the hut, he is transferred to a separate camera for round -the -clock observation of the FSIN employee. Every few hours, the doctor checks it. For the period of isolation, separate food is brought. And this is not an ordinary soldering, but dishes, like from a restaurant: a fresh fried chicken with rice, salads, compote. This all smells quite well, and the appetite of the prisoner must play. So try to break [Zek]. If it doesn’t work, then all sorts of persuasion are used, mutual concessions ... If it doesn’t work out, threats begin, ”says Dinze.

According to Dinze, not only the FSINESS can work with a starving prisoner. If the administration is necessary for the hungry riot to stop as soon as possible, attract a whole team: psychologists, priests, and high -ranking jailers come to the convict. All this is controlled by the chief of the operator.

“When a critical moment came up, [Sentsov] was threatened with compulsory feeding. When the bodies can already begin to refuse a person, the issue of forced feeding is resolved by medical recommendation, ”the lawyer recalls.

Dinze managed to get acquainted with the instructions on compulsory feeding, which then distributed to the penitentiary institutions (approved federal regulatory documents about this procedure after the collapse of the USSR did not appear). According to this document, the Federal Penitentiary Service creates a commission, which includes the head of the colony, an employee observing the prisoner, a therapist and (not always) doctors from a civil hospital.

“Before forced feeding food as such is not given. It is simply forced to drink certain medical solutions “supporting human life.” Well, like a compote. If a person refuses to drink, the solutions are administered intravenously and so support the body. When a person’s threat occurs, a real forced feeding begins with the introduction of a large number of different drugs and food, ”the lawyer retells. - He [Sentsov] was then said that he would be tied and will, as in intensive care, feed him forcibly. And he decided to get out of the hunger strike. ”

On the eve of the cessation of the hunger strike, Dinze said that the director was diagnosed with heart failure. In addition, Sentsov had problems with liver and kidneys.

On September 7, 2019, Sentsov was released as part of the exchange of prisoners between Russia and Ukraine.

Alexey Sutuga
In March 2015, in the Irkutsk pre -trial detention center, the anti -fascist Alexei Sutuga (known among activists as Socrates) announced a hunger strike after the FSIN officers deprived him of the right to correspondence and took books from him.

“I introduced a hunger strike when they already completely ... I rolled out a statement to the chief of Central, that I will not eat food until my books are given to me. They were seized from me at the moment when I was not in the hut [camera], they took them out of my bag without leaving a quit. The lawyer who came to me every week disappeared. And no one explained to me why I was not leaving for the stage, ” said the Sutuga Mediazone.

According to lawyer Vladimir Lukhtin, the sutuugh was invited to stay a sentence in a detachment of economic services in a pre-trial detention center and said that it would be possible to earn a parole. However, this did not suit the sutug: he asked to send him to serve his sentence according to the verdict, as well as return the selected books.

The lawyer says these proposals were more persistent every day. “They thought he was not ready to refuse, and he was ready. He considered the unacceptable punishment so unacceptable. I asked for nothing. That is, he had a colony of general regime - he asked for a colony of general regime. To where he had to leave for the verdict, ”Lukhtin told Novaya Gazeta.

The lawyer came to the stoop on the second or third day of the hunger strike, and the very next day he was transferred to IK-14 in Angarsk.

“Fessed its conditions. But if you retrospectively see how all this later affected the serving of the punishment: upon arrival, he found some prohibited object, and he was, accordingly, was immediately recognized as a malicious violator of the regime and placed in the so-called detachment of strict sentence of sentence, ”said Lukhtin.

Within a week, a stoop was charged with several more regime violations and placed in a chamber -type room for six months. Next, he was appointed another year in a single room of chamber type (EPT), after that he was again transferred to IK-14, where the schizo was immediately appointed, and then again the ECCT.

“For all this time, he never went out into the“ zone ”, as it is called. The man was in the cell for two years, ”the lawyer added.

Sutuga stopped a hunger strike after the stage in IK-14 in Angarsk. On May 4, 2017, he freed himself, having served his punishment. In September 2020, he died in the intensive care of the Sklifosovsky Institute from injuries received in a street fight.

Pussy Riot. Maria Alekhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova
In May 2013, the Pussy Riot art group, Maria Alekhina, announced a hunger strike after the judge forbade her to personally attend the meeting in the case of parole. A few days later, Alekhina announced her readiness to stop the hunger strike if in the Perm correctional colony, where she was serving a sentence for the action in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, the regime will relieve the tightening of the regime.

“All convicts who live or work next to me are closed to the castle, which deprives them of the opportunity to receive medical care and exacerbates the situation. I am at the moment for the sixth day with a demand to stop putting pressure on me through other convicts. The administration ignores the hunger strike. The prosecutor's office and human rights activists of the region do not make themselves felt. I intend to starve further, since I do not see another way to encourage the administration for negotiations, ”Alekhina reported .

On the 11th day, the activist stopped the hunger strike. The colony administration granted its requirements and weakened the detention regime of prisoners. The day before, Alekhina got to the hospital, but was not going to stop her protest.

The hunger strike in the Mordovian colony in September 2013 was announced by another Pussy Riot participant Nadezhda Tolokonnikova. She protested against unbearable conditions of detention. Members of the Council for Human Rights then also confirmed that the rights of prisoners are violated in the colony. On October 1, the FSIN Office in Mordovia reported that Tolokonnikova stopped a hunger strike, but on October 13 it became known that she resumed a protest after returning to the colony from the hospital.

Sergey Udaltsov and Sergey Razvoszhaev
The leader of the “Left Front” Sergey Udaltsov announced an indefinite hunger strike on July 24, 2014 after the Moscow City Court sentenced him, as well as his ally Leonid Razvozzhaev, to 4.5 years of a general regime in the case of the organization of riots on Bolotnaya Square on May 6, 2012.

Udaltsov held a hunger strike for 26 days. His lawyer Violett Volkova then told RBC that Udaltsova’s condition reached a critical point. If he had not stopped the hunger strike, doctors would be forcibly stopped. The system did not meet the opposition.

In October 2015, the hunger strike declared Razvozhaev in protest against the transfer to strict conditions of detention in the colony. The oppositionist’s lawyer Dmitry Agranovsky reported : the regime of stay in the colony was changed due to the fact that Razvozzhaev allegedly found a blade from a razor machine. At the same time, the lawyer noted that the opposition "does not shave at all, he has a beard."

Udaltsovwas released in August 2017, Razvozhaev in April of the same year.

Sergei Udaltsov also announced a “dry” hunger strike (without food and water) in August 2018 after he was sentenced to 30 days of administrative arrest for allegedly before the rally against pension reform on July 28 he organized another unauthorized event and voiced slogans on it. This hunger strike Udaltsov was accompanied by three hospitalizations. In addition, the opposition complained about the pain in the kidneys. On September 5, he began to drink water, but he did not stop the hunger strike.

Love Sobol
In July-August 2019, FBK lawyer Lyubov Sobol kept a hunger strike for more than 30 days, in the last of which she fainted. However, it was not the reaction of the body that was the reason for the completion of hungry protest, but the request of the mother of Alexei Minyailo, who was under arrest in the case of riots in Moscow on July 27. Minyailo kept a hunger strike as a sign of solidarity with Sobol since July 13, when the working commission of the election commission of the 43rd district in the Moscow City Duma refused the FBK lawyer in admission to the elections.

During all this time, Sobol lost 11 kg of weight, but at the same time continued to work. After Navalny announced the hunger strike, colleagues of Sobol published a post on her page (she herself is under house arrest in the “sanitary business”), in which she spoke about her experience of a hunger strike: about the process and long restoration after.

“Life in the Pokrovskaya colony is a real hell. A hunger strike in such conditions is a really extreme measure. If Navalny went to her, then there is no other way out, ”Sable wrote.

She said that for that “hungry” month, she sank one kidney, and several months after leaving this regime went to fight against depression.

“The first week is the most difficult: the body has not yet been rebuilt, it experiences stress due to lack of food. Then he will learn to break down fat cells into ketone bodies on which he will work. In the meantime, he does not understand where to draw energy. In the head - pictures with food, the smell of food excites and drives crazy. On one such evening, the smell of smoked sausage fled me, and I lay in bed, realizing that it was a hallucination, that there was no sausage nearby and could not be. [...] On the second or fourth day of the hunger strike, I could only lie, there was no strength to get up, ”Sable wrote.

According to her, about a week later, a sharp desire to eat was gone, she could function in the same way as usual, but there were many times less strength.

“I continued to work even in a hunger strike, lying on a cot in a small room of the signature center: it was impossible to give up and give up. [...] That month was unprecedentedly heavy, but they helped me: colleagues by the hand could bring me to the toilet at the other end of the room or to the shower, the doctors watched my hunger strike. I was measured the level of blood sugar to prevent fainting (once a fainting happened once), when I started pain, I was taken to an ultrasound. In general, I was under supervision, not one. Therefore, I am afraid to even imagine in what difficult conditions Navalny’s hunger strike will take place now, ”said the FBK lawyer.