Mr. Navalny’s group launched an outline of the colony on Monday underscoring the position of the co-opted prisoners in managing the inhabitants.
Upon arrival, for instance, guards pressure inmates to surrender on video the code of honor governing prisons run by the prison thieves in regulation, by saying, “I don’t help the prisoners’ lifestyle.” It’s in essence an acquiescence to the authority of the activists, based on this description, however this fealty can’t be acknowledged overtly as a result of, formally talking, the activist teams have been outlawed a decade in the past.
All the identical, at Penal Colony No. 2, activists command fellow prisoners to carry out meaningless duties reminiscent of making beds a number of occasions a day, or undressing after which dressing once more, based on accounts of former convicts.
Dmitri Dyomushkin, a nationalist politician who served time within the colony, described situations within the separate punishment brigade, the place Mr. Navalny might wind up for infractions as minor as failing to button his jacket, as psychologically harrowing.
Inmates, for instance, should shave each morning however are usually not allowed to take action themselves as a result of they aren’t allowed to carry razors; as a substitute, activists wield the razors and cuts and nicks are frequent, he stated.
Inmates spend hours standing with their fingers clasped behind their backs, their ft, forbidden from making eye contact with the guards, Mr. Dyomushkin stated in an interview on the Echo of Moscow radio station. Inmates use bathrooms with out partitions and are obliged to take action within the presence of an activist, he stated.
“They may discover some ways to stress him,” Mr. Dyomushkin stated of Mr. Navalny’s time period in Penal Colony No. 2. In these situations, he stated, “your character deforms.”