Russia: opponent Alexei Navalny says he has been placed in solitary confinement

Russian power continues to intimidate its opponents. Opponent and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny, imprisoned for a year and a half in Russia, said he was placed in a disciplinary cell on Monday August 15. “Greetings from isolation,” wrote on Twitter (in English) the opponent sentenced to 9 years in prison in a “severe regime penal colony” in March. “The union struggle is never easy, but then what about unions in prison,” he adds, a week after announcing the creation of a union of prisoners in his prison, near the city of Vladimir. 1/17 I’m an icon of conscious consumption. There’s only a mug and a book in my cell. I only get a spoon and a plate at mealtimes. They even took away my prison clothes and gave me temporary ones. Now I have huge white letters SHU on my back.Greetings from solitary confinement. — Alexey Navalny (@navalny) August 15, 2022 Alexeï Navalny explains that he was placed in solitary confinement for three days for having unbuttoned the top of his convict outfit, which, “obviously, makes me an incorrigible and unrepentant villain” , he quips in his messages. He adds that management has threatened to make the solitary cell his “permanent residence” unless he “changes his attitude”. He describes his cell as a “concrete niche” where “it’s very hot”, with a chair, a retractable bed, a sink and “a hole in the ground”. Visits are prohibited there, as are letters and parcels, and he only has “a cup and a book”. “I am a model of responsible consumption”, jokes the opponent, who was arrested when he returned to Russia in January 2021, after suffering serious poisoning which he attributes to the Kremlin. With the paper and pen to which he is entitled for just over an hour a day, he now explains that he wants to write a manual on the rights of prisoners to inform them. 16/17 I am now sitting on an iron bench behind an iron desk. I’m going to finish this thread and write a manual for inmates about their workplace rights until they take the paper away. The commission is right: I really seem to be incorrigible — Alexey Navalny (@navalny) August 15, 2022