2023-12-27 15:09:41
“Santa Claus” is apparently in the Arctic, and says he is in “a good state of mind”. After more than twenty days of disappearance which worried his loved ones and Western countries, Russian opponent Alexeï Navalny finally showed signs of life this Monday, December 25. His relatives announced that they had found his trace in the Kharp penal colony, in the region of Yamalo-Nenetsia, located beyond the Arctic Circle.
If Navalny preferred irony on social networks on his new “beard” which grew during his long journey and his new winter clothes a little more adapted to polar temperatures, his new daily life in this penitentiary establishment will not be like a Christmas TV movie. Nicknamed the “Polar Wolf”, Kharp prison is nothing other than an establishment inherited from the Soviet Gulag. It was founded in 1961 on the remains of the 501st Stalin-era forced labor camp, the Salekhard-Igarka railway. Also nicknamed the “road of death”, it saw several thousand Russian prisoners perish in the construction of a railway aimed at opening up the east of the USSR, ultimately never completed.
Up to -30 degrees in winter
Although inmates now work tanning and sewing reindeer skins used by local indigenous populations, prison conditions have maintained a reputation as being among the harshest in Russia. Located 1,900 kilometers north of Moscow, the cold is particularly violent, with winters where temperatures can approach -30 degrees.
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Several former detainees cited by the independent Russian newspaper The Moscow Times tell of very rustic conditions despite the polar cold, with worn and unsuitable clothing, vital needs far from being ensured as well as frequent physical and psychological violence against the prisoners. Even the Russian judicial authorities, whose degree of independence is no longer in doubt in the eyes of the whole world, have several times criticized the health failings of this prison. The region’s prosecutor, for his part, has pointed out twice since last year the non-compliance of the “Polar Wolf” with legislation on labor protection, fire safety and health standards.
Sentenced to 19 years in prison
Navalny will now discover “IK-3” in Kharp, named after the third Russian penal colony. Because since his arrest in January 2021 and his sentence to 19 years in prison for “extremism”, Navalny must serve his sentence in “special regime” prisons, the category of establishments where the conditions of detention are the harshest and which are usually reserved for lifers and the most dangerous prisoners.
He was previously held in Vladimir prison, 250 kilometers east of Moscow. Before disappearing at the beginning of December, which therefore meant his probable transfer to another establishment. With a particularity in Russia for such trips: they are made by train and often take weeks, in several stages in order to cover their tracks, the relatives of the detainees remaining without news during this period.
“Anyway, don’t worry about me.”
Enough to make his relatives particularly worried, who were not particularly reassured to discover his new place of detention. “This prison will be much worse than the last one. They are trying to make his life as unbearable as possible,” he told Reuters Navalny’s spokesperson Kira Yarmysh. One of his close collaborators, Ivan Zhdanov, accused the Russian authorities of wanting to “isolate” him in the run-up to the presidential election. According to him, Alexeï Navalny is detained in “one of the northernmost and most remote colonies” in Russia, where conditions are “difficult”.
Western countries were also worried. “The secret kept for nearly ten days by Russia on the situation of Alexeï Navalny and his transfer to a particularly isolated place of detention, to cut him off even further from his loved ones while his state of health has seriously deteriorated since his incarceration, constitute new unacceptable developments and patent violations of human rights,” reacted a spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in France. “We welcome the information that Mr. Navalny has been located,” said a spokesperson for American diplomacy. “However, we remain deeply concerned about the fate of Mr. Navalny and his unjust conditions of detention,” he said in a statement.
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But as always, Navalny preferred to be ironic and reassure about his situation, as if he did not want to give the Kremlin the pleasure of expressing its very probable wear and suffering. “Anyway, don’t worry about me. I’m fine. I’m relieved to finally be here,” he wrote on social media. There are, however, numerous reasons to be worried, four months before the inevitable re-election of Vladimir Putin as head of Russia. With an opposition bludgeoned like never before.
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