A convicted Orenburg human rights activist is under pressure in a correctional center

Yevgeny Pleskachev, a human rights activist from the Orenburg region, who was sentenced to forced labor, told OVD-Info that he was being pressured in the correctional center.

The Mednogorsk city court of the Orenburg region in December 2020 sentenced Pleskachev to 1 year and 3 months of forced labor with a deduction of 10 percent of earnings. To serve his sentence, the human rights activist was placed in a local correctional center.

According to Pleskachev, the leadership of the center is putting pressure on him. The man has problems with the work of the heart, at the moment he is on sick leave and is preparing for surgery. Over the past month, Pleskachev has received two reprimands, which he considers unfounded. For the first time, the convict was charged with eating at the wrong time, despite the fact that he needs to take pills strictly after eating. The second time Pleskachev was called to the leadership after returning from a doctor's appointment to take an explanation about the "warm dinner". Probably, the employees of the Federal Penitentiary Service meant that Pleskachev warmed up the food again at the wrong time.

The authorities of the center, ignoring Pleskachev's health problems, said that they would achieve a tougher sentence and send him to a colony if the human rights activist did not return to work.

• The criminal case against Yevgeny Pleskachev consisted of nine episodes: six under the article on insulting a representative of the authorities (Art. 319 of the Criminal Code), two under the article on contempt of court (Art. 1 article 318 of the Criminal Code).
• In April 2019, Pleskachev's house in Mednogorsk (Orenburg region) was searched as part of a case of insulting a government official. On that day, police officers prevented him from calling a lawyer, forced him to lie face down on the floor for more than an hour, tied his hands with straps until he was blue in the face, and hit him when he tried to turn on the camera on his phone. According to the investigation, one of Pleskachev's posts on social networks insulted the head of the investigation department, Yevgeny Kurganov.