Rights defenders claim hunger strike at Bryansk colony, Penitentiary Services denies such
BRYANSK. July 18 (Interfax) - More than 30 inmates of the fourth penitentiary in the village of Brasovo, Bryansk region, have gone on a hunger strike, human rights defenders said.
"Prosecutors exposed severe violations at the fourth penal colony in April 2013 but the warden, O. Govorov, continued his outrages. Thirty inmates from the second high security block went on a hunger strike and called for a prosecutor on July 15. Inmates in some other blocks have joined the protest," says a report published on the web portal gulagu.net.
"This information is incorrect. There has been no hunger strike," acting spokesman of the Federal Penitentiary Service's Bryansk regional department Arkady Minchenko told Interfax.
'There is a new wave of negative speculation about the Federal Penitentiary Service. The ones who stand to profit from that are well known: these are the people who do not wish to obey by the strict prison rules," he said.
Human rights defenders said in late June that 16 inmates transferred from Saratov and Kaluga were battered in the first penal colony in the Bryansk region. The regional department of the Federal Penitentiary Service denied that report and said, "Nothing of the sort had happened."
