Rights campaigners not pushing Savchenko to continue hunger strike - MHG chief
MOSCOW. Feb 20 (Interfax) - Russia's oldest human rights activist and head of the Moscow Helsinki Group (MHG) Lyudmila Alexeyeva has said that the Russian Investigative Committee (RIC) is wrong to claim that human rights campaigners are provoking Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko into continuing the hunger strike.
"I completely rule out such a possibility. In my 50 years of work experience, never has any rights campaigner urged anyone to go on a hunger strike," she told Interfax on Friday.
The MHG said she has always been against hunger strikes.
"I think this method of defending one's rights is very dangerous for one's health. The person is fasting and thinks himself being able to get through, but then discovers hereditary illnesses he never thought about, which were triggered by the fasting, albeit successfully. I always try to persuade anyone to stop the hunger strike. But I do understand that often a prisoner deprived of any rights has no other chance to defend their rights except at the expense of their own health," Alexeyeva said.
RIC spokesman Vladimir Markin told Interfax on Friday that it was right campaigners who were inciting Savchenko to continue the hunger strike.
After visiting Savchenko on February 13 the head of the Human Rights Council (HRC), Mikhail Fedotov said that she was ready to stop the hunger strike, if she is released and placed under house arrest.
On January 30 Russia's Human Rights Commissioner Ella Pamfilova visited Savchenko in jail and told Interfax she failed to persuade her to stop the hunger strike.
Savchenko announced the hunger strike last December.
According to Russian law enforcement authorities, Savchenko was involved in the events in eastern Ukraine as part of the Ukrainian 'Aidar' volunteer battalion. It emerged last July that she was held at a pre-trial detention facility in the southern Russian city of Voronezh, from where she was moved to Moscow in September.
Savchenko is accused of abetting the killing of Russian journalists in eastern Ukraine. Savchenko pleaded not guilty.
