Jailed Russian dissident Alexei Navalny began a hunger strike to demand the prison to provide him with proper medical care.
Navalny sent a handwritten letter addressed to the governor of the prison, which his team posted on his social media accounts on Wednesday, saying that his complaints of acute back and thigh pains were ignored by officers.
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“I really need a doctor. Every convict has the right (by law) to invite a specialist to examine and consult him. Even I have such a right and I’m innocent,” Navalny wrote in the letter, per Reuters. “I demand that a doctor be allowed to see me, and until this happens, I am declaring a hunger strike.”
After visiting him last Thursday, Olga Mikhailova, one of the lawyers for Navalny, said that the activist’s health has declined during his time in prison, and she specifically mentioned that “his right leg is in a terrible state.” She explained that while the prison gave Navalny ibuprofen, they have not passed along medications from his personal physician or allowed his doctor to examine him.
Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service, however, said last week that Navalny’s condition was found to be “stable and satisfactory” after checkups.
“I don’t want to lose both legs,” Navalny wrote in the same letter. “It would not be fair. Everyone has two legs and I wouldn’t have any.”
In January, Navalny returned to Russia after receiving treatment in Germany for nerve agent poisoning, which experts suspect was a result of a plot by the Russian government to have him killed. Upon returning to the country, Navalny was arrested and sentenced to serve 2 1/2 years in prison for violating the terms of his parole, and he has insisted that the charges are retribution. His sentence was reduced minimally by an appeals court.
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Navalny is serving out his sentence in a penal colony east of Moscow, which is known for its particularly harsh conditions.
“I must admit that Russia’s prison system managed to surprise me,” he said in an Instagram post on March 15, according to a translation from the New York Times. “I did not imagine that it was possible to set up a real concentration camp 100 kilometers from Moscow.”
