Navalny went on hunger strike last week to protest against the refusal of prison officials to give him access to adequate medical care. He had suffered from acute back pain that affected his ability to walk and his condition was aggravated by the alleged “torture due to lack of sleep”, one of his lawyers said last month.
Navalny said the prison lacked the food and nutrients needed to keep inmates healthy, adding that his temperature was 38.1 degrees Celsius (100.6 Fahrenheit) and he had a severe cough.
In Monday’s post, Navalny also said that 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 sirens of the ambulance are ringing? Nobody cares, the bosses are just worried about how to hide the statistics,” Navalny said in the post.
“Practically exemplary” criminal colony
In the post published on Monday, Navalny also criticized the recent coverage of the Russian state press on the conditions inside the penal colony.
Last week, a film crew of the state-controlled RT television network visited prison with Maria Butina, a Russian gun rights enthusiast, transformed into the TV personality who now works for the network. The report said the prison was “virtually exemplary.”
Booty was convicted of conspiring to act as an agent for 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 election.
Navalny pushed back against RT’s assessment of the conditions.
“This is what our ideal, exemplary colony looks like.” Every prisoner prays to God not to get here, but inside there are unhealthy conditions, tuberculosis, lack of medicines. Overall, I’m surprised that the Ebola virus doesn’t exist here yet, “Navalny said Monday in a post on Instagram.
“I have the guaranteed legal right to invite a specialist at my expense. I will not give it up, prison doctors can be trusted as much as state television,” he added.
Navalny, a longtime critic of President Vladimir Putin, was jailed earlier this year for violating the probation conditions of a 2014 case in which he received a three-and-a-half-year suspended sentence. A Moscow court has taken into account the 11 months Navalny has already spent under house arrest as part of the decision and replaced the rest of the suspended sentence with a prison sentence last month.