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Everything changed on Sunday when it became clear that the Kremlin’s most famous critic, Alexei Navaln, who had been poisoned last year by Novičiok for fighting nerve-paralyzing substances and was sent to prison last month, would serve his sentence at the infamous Center. Pokrov Correctional Facility. .
Correctional colony no. 2, surrounded by a corrugated sheet metal fence with barbed wire on top, is located near the city of Pokrov, about 100 km east of Moscow. This colony will be home to an anti-corruption activist for the next two and a half years.
A court ruling last month to jail 44-year-old Navalna for violating the terms of her probation in a 2014 fraud and embezzlement trial sparked outrage from Russian civil society and Western countries, and the Union. European agreed new sanctions against Moscow.
However, Pokrov’s people are reluctant to sympathize with Navalno.
“We don’t care what kind of prison it is,” said Jadviga Krylova, a 56-year-old retiree. “The most important thing is that he is in jail.”
“It is said to be one of the toughest colonies in Russia,” Denis, who introduced himself as a businessman, told AFP but did not give his name. “Maybe that’s why he moved here.”
Long working hours, difficult conditions
Adjacent to the colony is a food processing plant run by Mondelez International, which in 2009 commemorated the city with a bronze sculpture of a fairy holding chocolate in her hands to commemorate the company’s 15th anniversary.
Pokrov sits between Moscow and Vladimir, a former Russian political and cultural center with ornate cathedrals protected by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) that draw crowds of tourists.
In Soviet times, the region marked the so-called 101 km outside of Moscow, where many members of the cultural elite were deported.
Navaln’s new home belongs to a vast network of 684 colonies, a system created by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and reminiscent of his gulag system of forced labor camps. Currently, some 393 thousand people are imprisoned in these colonies. prisoners.
The prisoners have to work hard for a low salary, which is practically covered by a system to cover the maintenance costs of the prisoners.
Russian human rights activists often criticize the system for excessive working hours and difficult conditions for prisoners.
Maxim Trudoliubov, editor of the independent news portal Meduza, says that the Russian correctional settlement system is an instrument used by the Kremlin to break the spirits of opponents and marginalize critics.
“That is their purpose: either the person suffers a psychological break or leaves Russia as soon as the fine,” Trudoliubov told AFP.
“In any case, the political opponent is removed from the field,” he added.
In 2013, the system came to the fore when imprisoned Nadezhda Tolokonikova, a member of the Pussy Riot protest group, announced plans to go on a hunger strike in her neighborhood to protest “slave labor.”
Harassment and humiliation
“Your hands were stabbed with a needle and scratched, splattering blood on your desk, but you still have to sew,” Tolokonikova said of her correctional colony in Mordovia, southeast of Moscow.
Alexander Kalashnikov, director of the Russian Federal Prison Service (FSIN), told the state news agency TASS last week that there was no threat to Navaln. According to him, A. Navalnas will work as a chef, librarian or sew masks.
As soon as news of their relocation broke, former prisoners from this colony shared memories of their time there, describing it as one of the most infamous correctional facilities in the country.
One of them, Dmitry Demushkin, a nationalist politician who had been imprisoned in the Pokrov colony for two years, told Dozd television that the prison administration was trying to “psychologically break the people.”
Konstantin Kotov, who has been imprisoned in this colony for almost two years for violating the rules of the protests, told the AFP news agency that the administration controls every step of the prisoners.
According to him, the prisoners have almost no free time and the administration completely cuts them off from the outside world to “put pressure on people and ensure their obedience.”
“This colony is considered exemplary and is achieved by treating people differently,” he said.
After sending Navalna behind bars, the Russian opposition was left without its leading voice.
Some question whether he will be ready to continue the fight after two and a half years of captivity in this institution.
“There will be harassment and humiliation,” said Marina Litvinovich of the Moscow Public Monitoring Commission, which monitors conditions in prisons.
“The purpose of the system is to break it,” he added.
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