Sixty prisoners continue their hunger strike in Dimitrovgrad after beatings of natives of Caucasus

The Ombudsperson of the Ulyanovsk Region has announced that 22 convicts in the Dimitrovgrad prison wrote declarations about going on a hunger strike, and 38 more people participate in the protest action unofficially. According to the human rights defenders’ information, two convicts sewed up their mouths with the demand to launch an investigation into the cases of humiliation and beatings of prisoners from Ingushetia and Chechnya.

The “Caucasian Knot” has reported that on April 13, prisoners on fasting, mostly from Chechnya and Ingushetia, were beaten in the Dimitrovgrad prison, and their copies of the Koran and prayer rugs were destroyed, the “Gulagu.net” project reported. According to the human rights defenders’ information, dozens of convicts, including non-Muslims, injured themselves in protest, and on April 14, about a hundred prisoners went on the hunger strike. The hunger strike was preceded by a mass action of violators of the penal colony regime who were protesting against searches in cells, reported the Department for the Ulyanovsk Region of the Federal Penitentiary Service (known as FSIN).

The prisoners sewed up their mouths and went on the dry hunger strike in protest against the fact that their complaints had not yet been submitted to the prosecutor’s office and the reports about humiliation of convicts were not being investigated, the “Gulagu.net” project reported on its Telegram channel.

According to the “Gulagu.net” project’s report, the prison was visited by law enforcers, who “applied psychological pressure and blackmailed the prisoners in order to force them to keep in secret the damage to the copies of the Koran and the religious books of Muslims.”

Let us remind you that in November 2021, the videos released by the “Gulagu.net” project about torture of residents of Chechnya, Dagestan, Georgia, and Azerbaijan in the Saratov prison hospital caused a wide public outcry.