Tuberculosis patients have declared a riot in the Dnipropetrovsk colony

Cold in the cells and a lack of treatment. Three hundred prisoners are on hunger strike, and five have slashed their wrists. Human rights activists began to sound the alarm after seeing a video that was handed to them by convicts from Dnipropetrovsk Correctional Colony No. 89. The Penitentiary Service denies the mass nature of the protest.

Prisoner:

I am Aleksandr Vasilyevich Khikhlushko; for the last 6 months, doctors have claimed that I am healthy. But at the same time, I am in a cell with 4 people who have an active form of tuberculosis. I have suspicions that the administration purposefully wants to infect me with tuberculosis.

This video was filmed in the isolation ward of Dnipropetrovsk Correctional Colony No. 89. Five people on mobile phone camera take turns stating: they are on hunger strike because they have been driven to despair.

Denis Batyalov, prisoner of Dnipropetrovsk Correctional Colony No. 89:

At the moment, I have been on hunger strike for 3 days. No one from the administration has come to me or even inquired about the reason. Both I and the other prisoners located next to me cannot receive proper treatment in this cell.

There are a thousand prisoners in the eighty-ninth zone. Half of them are ill with tuberculosis. The State Penitentiary Service initially refused to comment and insisted that there were no mass protests. However, upon learning about the video, they allowed journalists in. The management assured them that everyone is being treated as they should be. They claimed that only prisoners isolated for disobedience, from whom mobile phones and other prohibited items had been confiscated, were rioting.

Aleksandr Kakateyev, head of Correctional Colony No. 89:

They want more favourable conditions of detention for themselves, to be allowed to move from cell to cell, and to keep prohibited items.

The Prosecutor's Office also found no violations.

Yaroslav Sosnivsky, head of a department of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Prosecutor's Office:

The facts that were stated did not find confirmation. The people who claimed that unlawful methods were used against them refused to come out. Only one person came out, and he has no complaints.

The prisoner who dared to come out – the hero of the prison footage – is Denis Batyalov. He says he has only a year left behind bars, yet he ventured on a hunger strike together with nine others because he cannot endure the torture.

Denis Batyalov, prisoner on hunger strike:

Look, so that no one ignores that there are no cuts. There are 5 more people sitting there, just like me, all slashed, cut, beaten; the whole cell is in blood.

Human rights activist Andriy Didenko, who uploaded this footage to the network, is himself a former prisoner, so he knows not by hearsay how the rights of convicts are violated. However, it is usually difficult to obtain evidence of torture.

Andriy Didenko, human rights activist:

Today, the public does not have access to such institutions. And we, unfortunately, do not have the opportunity to verify, that is, to confirm or refute this information.

The current riot in Dnipropetrovsk occurred a few weeks after a hunger strike in the Berdyansk colony. After a series of denials, the Prosecutor's Office took up the case and discovered that prisoners were indeed being starved, frozen, beaten, and forced to do hard labour for 12 hours a day without days off. The prosecutors opened a criminal case, but there are no results yet – all the leadership remains in their positions for now.