Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny goes on hunger strike in prison
31 March 2021
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has gone on a hunger strike in prison in protest of authorities allegedly denying him medical treatment for pain and numbness in his back and leg, his Instagram account announced Wednesday.
Why it matters: Navalny's lawyers fear that his health is deteriorating in the remote Russian penal colony where he is serving a 2.5-year sentence. He wrote on Instagram that he is being "tortured by sleep deprivation" and has "no other methods of fighting," according to a Meduza translation.
The big picture: Navalny was sentenced to prison in February for violating parole while recovering from an assassination attempt in Germany.
- U.S. and European Union officials have demanded Navalny's release and sanctioned Russian officials for his poisoning with the nerve agent Novichok, which has been attributed to Russian intelligence.
- Navalny is an anti-corruption activist who has often been referred to as "the man Putin fears most." His detention and sentencing set off mass protests across Russia.
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.
Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.
The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.
- The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.
What the transcripts say:
- Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
- The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
- Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."
Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.