Last Word

Highly esteemed court! It has already been two months since I was taken in custody, and this experience made me think about a lot of things and deeply reconsider my action! I will tell you about the conclusions I have come to shortly, but first I will let you know what I have been through meanwhile.

I have an autoimmune genetic condition—celiac disease. This disease is often diagnosed in adults, but I have a very acute form of it, so I learned all about it in my early childhood. This disease is not curable, but if a strict gluten-free diet is maintained for many years, it will not make itself felt. Before I appeared in the places of my confinement, the Federal Penitentiary System normative standards did not include such a diet, and my breakfast and both courses of my lunch fully consisted of foods that are poison to my body. For this reason, I had to go without food, which is contraindicated in my case considering my low BMI (registered by a doctor upon my departure from the temporary detention facility). From time to time, I ate what I was given, causing damage to my own internal organs. In a few days of not maintaining the diet, a person living with the celiac disease may do such harm to their intestine (it leads to cancer!) that rehabilitation of that organ will take years.

Thanks to the efforts of human rights advocates, lawyers, and the human rights committee, I was provided with a gluten-free diet. I was detained on April 11, but we only managed to secure food for me by May 5. But even then, sometimes I did not receive it. And I still have stomachaches, even though before my detention, I had not experienced this sensation for many years. This requires medical examination, which in the conditions of the detention center is impossible in principle, as the center does not even have the doctor I need—a gastroenterologist. At the first hearing when my pre-trial measure was determined, the judge asked me when was the last time I saw a doctor regarding my disease. For the past decade, I had no need to do that as I took care of my health and maintained the diet since early childhood. If I was asked the same question today, I’d say that I want to see the doctor right now!

Although it might be that my stomach is aching for a different reason. While in detention, a cyst has grown in my ovary! A gynecologist registered small growths during the ultrasound when I was leaving the temporary detention facility, and by May 16, the cyst has grown so big that the jail gynecologist who saw it through the most modern ultrasound machine, instantly prescribed hormone therapy for me. According to this doctor, the cyst in my ovary has grown due to stress, and, quite obviously, there will not be any less stress in my life if I remain in custody. This is why I need a medical examination: because at this moment, I already have a double risk of cancer.

To cope with the stress, I signed a contract to pay for the services of a qualified psychotherapist. This happened two weeks ago, but the papers have been stuck somewhere in the FPS structures, and I still am not getting any qualified help. At home, I will be able to get this help immediately, because the therapist was ready to come and see me on the same day the contract was signed.

I also have dental problems registered by a jail dentist: I require four surgical operations on my jaw as difficult impacted wisdom teeth cause me pain. I agreed to have the first of these surgeries immediately. However, the recovery process that followed it took me almost a month: an incision in my mouth was not closed, because in the whole medical department there were no sutures to be found. An inflammation started, and I had to take an antibiotic course. I still have the aches in my jaw from time to time, but in the detention center, I could not always get even the painkillers. In the following months, I will have to have the remaining three of such teeth, and considering my recent experience, I believe it would be more humane if I were allowed to have these surgeries at a clinic, where I will get sutures and X-rays.

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Now I will tell you to what conclusions I have arrived regarding my crime. After the first court hearing and the investigation, I started thinking that life is justly punishing me with these physical suffering—but after the first week of staying in the temporary detention facility, I already started having certain doubts. For two weeks, I was not able to get a transfer to the detention center No. 5 (where I ended up only on April 23!). New detainees kept coming to the facility, and there was not enough police to escort everyone. I could hear conversations behind the door of my cell: according to the employees, they preferred to first transfer the so-called real criminals, and only then deal with me.

When I finally arrived at the detention center No.5 and, while filling in the necessary documentation, explained my action and the article, with which many people were not yet familiar, the employees of the overcrowded jail opened their eyes wide in amazement and asked, “And this is a reason to take someone in custody now?” Upon learning the sentence that is prescribed for my action, people whom I met in jail were shocked and did not conceal their surprise. “But even drug dealers get shorter sentences!” one of the prisoners said once. And one of my cellmates, who had spent several years in the detention center without any other sources of information but television and openly supported our president and the military operation in Ukraine… even she was shocked by the reason why I am held in the detention center like a dangerous criminal. And just this fact made her doubt the justice of our new criminal law.

Is it worth talking about all the support I am receiving from people? At the detention center No. 5, I received more than a hundred letters. These are letters from people of different ages and religions, different social backgrounds and jobs: retired people, mothers on maternal leave, cultural workers, engineers, professors, IT specialists, students… I even get letters from children and practicing Orthodox Christians. All of them believe that my action is not a crime and they are asking for my release—they are asking the state institutions, the court, God.

It seems that deep down, even the people who are accusing me of this do not want a real sentence or a continuation of my pre-trial measure for me. I will say an even less comfortable truth. All of this is happening to me now and will be happening because there is a certain “order from above” regarding me. Rumors about this have been heard since the day of my detention, and reading publications on the cases of other people charged with the same article only convinced me that it is so. It’s like fragments of their charges had been copied and pasted: they coincide with mine completely, absolutely disregarding our personal characteristics as if we all were the same. As if these charges had been written by robots.

But you are not machines! You are men! Creatures who have their freedom of choice, their free will. Maybe I don’t have a fraction of your status. But I also work, and if I ever was offered a job that did not align with my moral principles, I refused to do it and returned the advance payment, putting my career and professional reputation at risk.

Can it be that the freest person in this room is a 47-kilogram [104 lbs] woman locked in a cage?! You too have the right to choose and make your own decisions! And at least to change my pre-trial measure to a less severe one, if only considering the state of my health and the moral and financial damage that was caused to me during just a month of not the most humane custody at the detention center.

I know that I am a nobody against the powers that be, but I appeal to your humanity and justice, which will help me somewhat restore my health at home and decently say goodbye to my friends—before I go to prison for ten years on the order from above, for my freedom of speech.

05/30/2022