The Supreme Court rejected the claim of Alexei Navalny to the Ministry of Justice to invalidate the internal regulations of correctional institutions. This is reported by the Navalny Team.
Navalny filed a lawsuit due to the fact that he was deprived of writing materials. Here is how he previously described the situation:
“If you open any document describing the rights of convicts, then the right to write complaints, statements, appeals, etc. will be listed first. It seems to be ironclad. It is clear why: the convicts are in a subordinate and almost powerless position, the prison administrations have a natural desire to turn them into powerless and dumb cattle in general.
Therefore, society, represented by the legislator, tells them: if something is wrong, complain. Immediately write a complaint, this is your main right. Everything is beautiful, only in order to complain, you need a pen and a piece of paper.
And here a trick, delightful in its arrogance and lawlessness, takes place. The Criminal Executive Code does not contain any restrictions on the use of writing instruments. But the internal rules of the zones and prisons are written in such a way that the main complainants – those who are kept in the ShIZO, PKT, etc. for this reason, that is, “under the roof”, – are easily deprived of writing materials, if the head of the zone wants it . They are “issued according to the schedule”. The order is approved by the boss. Therefore, someone is given paper and a pen for an hour. In some places – for 15 minutes, and to write one letter, a convict needs a week.
I have removed writing materials from my schedule altogether. How? Yes, that's it – the boss decided so. We went to court, which ruled: the boss decides everything.”
Earlier, there were already meetings on this topic in the Kovrov court, where Navalny's claims were rejected. This time, Navalny did not dispute the actions of the colony, but the internal regulations themselves, but the claim was also rejected.
Navalny's team notes that since July last year, Navalny's daily routine has changed about ten times. At the beginning, the guaranteed time for “writing complaints, applications and postcards” was two to three hours a day, and in the spring this item, as a separate item, was removed from the schedule.
“I’m not asking for a Christmas tree to be put in my cell… We are talking about the basic human right to have a pen in the cell and a piece of paper to write a letter or [complaint] to the court,” Navalny himself noted.
