MOSCOW -- "I have trouble breathing. I can't catch my breath and have trouble understanding things," said businessman Boris Shpigel who is suspected of bribing the former governor of Russia's Penza region, at a court hearing on April 6. "I'm in great pain…. My stomach hurts and I can't catch my breath." "I don't have long left, a few days," Shpigel, 68, predicted. "I haven't slept for six days because I can't find a comfortable position. I hurt all over and my right leg is numb…. Every day is torture for me. I can't take anymore. I can't stand it." Such allegations are nothing new for Russia's opaque prison system. For years, activists, lawyers, and former prisoners, have drawn attention to the poor quality of medical care in Russian prisons and pretrial detention centers and have alleged that, in many cases, medical treatment is withheld to pressure suspects, to extract false confessions or accusations, or simply as a form of punishment. "As for medical care overall, often a prison will only have a paramedic and no real schedule for when specialists will visit," said Asmik Novikova, director of research at the nongovernmental legal aid organization Public Verdict. "This is, of course, a very serious problem." Now attention across Russia and around the world has turned to the plight of opposition political leader Aleksei Navalny, who is serving 2 1/2 years at a prison in the town of Pokrov in the Vladimir region based on a conviction that he says was politically motivated. Navalny and his attorneys have alleged that he is being subjected to a "deliberate campaign" to undermine his health.
Despite Navalny's high public profile, his story is all-too-familiar to prisoners' rights advocates, said Oleg Dubrovkin, who spent 24 years in Russian prisons and now works at the Prisoners' Rights Defense Foundation. He says assisting prisoners who complain of health and health-care issues is one of his main duties. The prison system, he said, has strict rules for the provision of medical care, but they are applied chaotically. "Whether or not they are applied in the institution where Navalny is being held, I don't know," he told RFE/RL. "To me all the prisoners are the same, whether it is Navalny or just some average Petrov. It doesn't matter." "In my experience, I have seen many complaints from prisoners who say that people suffering from tuberculosis have been placed in their wards," Shunin said. "They often believe that this is done to pressure them and that the refusal to provide medical care is often a mechanism for pressuring inmates." "Under the law, any civilian doctor can come to a prison at the request of an inmate," Yenikeyev said. "However, only a prison doctor can order an inmate's transfer to a civilian hospital, since that requires a special escort and additional labor. But when the doctor is ready to come to the prison at his or her own expense and there are no additional costs, then it must happen if the prisoner desires it."
www.rferl.org