The survivors of the terrorist attack against the primary school in Beslan decided on Monday to begin hunger-strike in solidarity with an unjustly imprisoned politician.

The members of the Voice of Beslan public committee of the injured in the Beslan terrorist attack in 2004 went on a hunger strike in solidarity with politician Mr. Alexei Navalny.

Co-chair of the Voice of Beslan public committee Ms. Ella Kesayeva, her daughter Zarina, as well as Ms. Zemfira Tsirikhova, Mr. Boris Ilyin, and Mr. Zamira Kokoeva, are taking part in the action in support of Mr. Navalny.

We can not stand idly when Mr. Navalny's health is under the threat.

We are very concerned about a man who was taken to a hostage like our children in 2004. After we sought justice at hundreds of courts, we realised that there were no judges in Russia. We shouted, that if impunity of authorities after Beslan will give rise to new crimes. But at that time, many did not understand it.

We are very concerned about a man who was taken to a hostage like our children in 2004.

Now, they start to recognise that the Russian regime poses threat not only to Russians but to all mankind. It is a disaster that civil society did not understand us, Ms. Kesaeva noted.

In her opinion, Mr. Navalny was a person who could convey the truth about Putin's regime to millions of Russians. He taught that we should not be afraid, and we need to fight, Ms. Kesaeva emphasized. We need to express our attitude, our civic position. To be silent means betraying ourselves, the future of our children, she added.


Biology Professor Joins Hunger-Strike

On April 10, in solidarity with Navalny, Mr. Nikolai Formozov, a biologist from Moscow, a former professor at the Higher School of Economics and Moscow State University, went on a hunger strike.

Opposition politician Mr. Alexei Navalny has been in prisoners colony No. 2 in the city of Pokrov, Vladimir Region, since February. The court sentenced him to three and a half years in prison. It was the punishment in the Yves Rocher criminal case tried eight years ago.  The European Court of Human Rights found it unlawful. In the colony, Navalny's health condition deteriorated sharply. Since the end of March, the politician went on a hunger strike to demand the necessary medical care.


IK-3 "torture"

On April 19, the Russian Penitentiary Department, FSIN, announced that Navalny had been transferred to a hospital on the territory of another colony IK-3 in Vladimir. The FSIN assesses Navalny's health as satisfactory.

But the independent doctors emphasised is not a hospital at all but another medical station at the prison camp.

The media called IK-3 "torture". Former prisoners claimed that they were being transferred to this colony for "re-education" and extorting confessions of crimes. The convicts stated that in the hospital they were injected with psychotropic drugs, tortured, and raped.