Russian dissident Alexei Navalny has compared his prison to a Chinese labor camp and said in his first behind-the-scenes interview that he is forced to watch more than eight hours a day of state television and propaganda films.
The 45-year-old Kremlin critic, detained in a maximum security prison in Pokrov, about 60 kilometers east of Moscow, told the New York Times that the days of hard work in the Soviet gulags have been replaced by ” psychological violence “. brainwashing and propaganda.
“You could imagine musicians tattooed with steel teeth who keep fighting with knives to grab the best crib by the window,” Navalny told the newspaper.
“You have to imagine something like a Chinese work camp, where everyone walks in a row and where there are video cameras everywhere. There is constant control and a trap culture, ”he said.
But he suggested that perhaps the craziest of the draftsman would be forced to watch state propaganda and propaganda films for more than eight hours a day in what authorities call an “awareness-raising” program.
Navalny said “reading, writing or doing anything else” is prohibited. “You have to sit in a chair and watch TV,” he said, adding that if a prisoner falls asleep, the guards shout, “Don’t sleep, look!”
The best-known critic of President Vladimir Putin, who is serving a two-and-a-half-year sentence after returning from Germany, survived a nervous breakdown last year that Russia denied having carried out.
In April, he announced he was ending a three-week hunger strike, which required proper care for leg and back pain.
Despite his plight, Navalny was optimistic about Russia’s future prospects as he described his strategy for making political changes.
“Putin’s regime is a historic accident, not an inevitability. It was the election of the corrupt Yeltsin family, “he told the Times, referring to Putin’s appointment of former President Boris Yeltsin as acting president in 1999.
“Sooner or later, this mistake will be resolved and Russia will move to a path of democratic and European development. Just because that’s what people want, ”he wrote in the newspaper.
Navalny also attacked the US and Europe over the economic sanctions imposed on Moscow, saying they harm ordinary Russians.
He said the sanctions should only be directed at the country’s top oligarchs, who have largely avoided sanctions by hiring “an army of lawyers, lobbyists and bankers, fighting for the owners of dirty, bloody money to go unpunished”.
Describing his daily routine, Navalny said the five daily sessions of watching TV begin right after the morning calisthenics, breakfast and sweeping the yard.
“We watch movies about the Great Patriotic War,” he said, referring to World War II, “or how one day, 40 years ago, our athletes defeated Americans or Canadians.”
“I understand more clearly the essence of Putin’s regime ideology: the present and the future are replaced by the past: the truly heroic past or the embellished past or the completely fictitious past,” Navalny said.
“Every kind of past has to be constantly in the spotlight to shift thoughts about the future and questions about the present,” he said, adding, “Everything is organized so that it is under maximum control 24 hours a day. day”.
Navalny estimated that a third of the prison population comprises so-called “activists,” inmates who serve as guardian informants.
During his first few weeks in the herd, he said, with his limbs asleep, either from persistent effects of Novichok poisoning or from a back injury he was driving in a prison vehicle, but added that the his symptoms subsided when the guards stopped waking him up every hour of the night.
“I now understand why sleep deprivation is one of the preferred tortures of special services,” he told the Times. “There are no traces left and it is impossible to tolerate.”
The dissident also said he has not been assaulted by any fellow inmates, and even described how he likes to have snacks with them.
“When we cook, I always remember the classic‘ Goodfellas ’scene, when mafia bosses cook pasta in a prison cell,” he said. “Unfortunately, we don’t have such a fresh pot and pasta is forbidden. Still, it’s fun. “
Navalny was charged this month with new crimes that could extend his prison term by three years, AFP reported.
If found guilty, he could only be released after 2024, the year in which Russia is scheduled to hold presidential elections.