Navalny went on a hunger strike last week to protest the refusal of prison officials to grant him access to adequate medical care. He had been suffering from acute back pain that affected his ability to walk and his condition was being exacerbated by the alleged “sleep deprivation torture,” said one of his lawyers last month.
Navalny said the prison lacked the sustenance and nutrients needed to keep prisoners healthy, adding that its temperature was recorded at 38.1 degrees Celsius (100.6 Fahrenheit) and that he had a severe cough.
In Monday’s post, Navalny also said there was an outbreak of tuberculosis among his cellmates, with three of the group’s 15 inmates recently hospitalized with the disease.
“And what? Do you think there is a state of emergency, the ambulance sirens are ringing? No one cares, the bosses are just concerned with how to hide the statistics,” said Navalny in the post.
‘Practically exemplary’ penal colony
In the shared post on Monday, Navalny also criticized the recent Russian state media coverage of conditions within the penal colony.
Last week, a film crew from the Russian state-controlled TV network, RT, visited the prison with Maria Butina, a Russian arms rights enthusiast who became a TV personality and now works for the network. The report said the prison was “practically exemplary”.
Butina was convicted of conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign state in the United States and served more than 15 months behind bars in Florida. She pleaded guilty to trying to infiltrate conservative political circles and promote Russian interests before and after the 2016 presidential elections.
Navalny resisted RT’s assessment of conditions.
“This is what our ‘exemplary and ideal colony’ looks like. Any prisoner prays to God not to get here, but inside there are unhygienic conditions, tuberculosis, lack of medicines. Looking at the horrible dishes on which we put our porridge, In general, I am surprised that there is still no Ebola virus here, “said Navalny in an Instagram post on Monday.
“I have the legally guaranteed right to invite a specialist doctor at my own expense. I will not give up, prison doctors are as reliable as state TV,” he added.
Navalny, a longtime critic of President Vladimir Putin, was arrested earlier this year for violating the terms of parole in a 2014 case in which he received a suspended sentence of three and a half years. A Moscow court took into account the 11 months that Navalny had already spent under house arrest as part of the decision and replaced the rest of the suspended sentence with a prison sentence last month.