Hunger strike in defence of Vasily Aleksanyan continues in Rostov-on-Don

The hunger strike with the demand to release from SIZO the fatally sick former Vice-President of the YUKOS Company Vasily Aleksanyan will be continued in Rostov-on-Don, as the participants of the action have assured the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent. They are indignant with today's decision of the Simonovskiy Court of Moscow, which has suspended the trial on Aleksanyan's case, but left him in custody as "he can be treated in the conditions of the SIZO (pre-trial detention facility)."

"It was informed that the attending physician did not visit Aleksanyan in prison for weeks. She came to him only after Khodorkovsky had declared a hunger strike. <...> And they drove Aleksanyan to form 4B of lymphatic system cancer, and at the 4th stage any cancer is inoperable, that is - fatal. His only remedy now is irradiation and chemical treatment," explains Raissa Grishechkina, a hunger-striker from Rostov-on-Don, who was herself treated against cancer. Today, she is on her hunger strike for the 6th day.

Ms Grishechkina, who held a hunger strike against the war in Chechnya for 30 days in 1995, believes that Vasily Aleksanyan can get his necessary treatment only in a specialized civil clinic; she is going to starve until he gets an opportunity to be placed there.

On February 5, Elena Sannikova, an activist of the movement against the war in Northern Caucasus, one of initiators of the hunger strike with a demand to release heavily sick prisoner Vasily Aleksanyan and send him to treatment, had a hypoglycaemic crisis. The hunger-striker herself told about it to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

Despite the sixth day of hunger strike and hypoglycaemic crisis, on February 5 she went to Nizhni Novgorod to meet the advocate of Boris Stomakhin, the author of the website "Kavkaz-Centre", who was convicted for kindling interethnic enmity; a number of human rights activists are regarding Boris Stomakhin and Vasily Aleksanyan to be political prisoners.

On February 7, Ms Sannikova and the advocate plan to go to Burepolom settlement of the Nizhni Novgorod Region, where the court will consider the petition of sick Stomakhin about his early conditional release.