Taisia Osipova being "slowly killed"

RFE/RL has an article on Russian rights activist Taisia Osipova's third birthday in prison: 

Osipova, who has a 7-year-old daughter, was initially sentenced to 10 years in prison for the possession and attempted sale of heroin.

The ruling sparked an outcry and was denounced by critics as a setup aimed at putting pressure on her husband's political activities.

She got a retrial in 2012 after then-President Dmitry Medvedev criticized the verdict as "too severe."

But her sentence was trimmed by just two years, although prosecutors had recommended that she serve a total of four years.

Osipova has complained of being subjected to humiliation by officials at her prison near Tver, including being held in a crowded cell and routinely barred from meeting with her lawyer.

According to Fomchenkov, she is also being denied proper medical treatment for diabetes. She is also reported to be suffering from pancreatitis.

Her health, he says, is rapidly deteriorating.

"She is not receiving suitable treatment. As a person with diabetes, she should have appropriate living conditions and diet," Fomchenkov says. "This is impossible in prison. There is no endocrinologist there. In three years of detention she has seen an endocrinologist only twice, although she should be under constant monitoring by a specialist. This is not happening. They are slowly killing her."

See also in this blog: Taisia Osipova sentenced to 8 years 

The New "Hooligans"

At Grani.ru, Lev Rubinstein considers the current wave of arrests, detentions and court hearings in Russia, all targeted at those who dissent from the Putin government's harsh and repressive social policies. Whereas in Soviet times the principal accusation leveled at dissidents was that of being "spies", the most common charge now is "hooliganism". But unfortunately for the authorities the new "hooligans" don't look, speak or behave like hooligans, especially when compared with their judicial tormentors:

Well, just go and attend one or two of these hearings. Just take a look at the faces of the accused and compare them with those of the judges, prosecutors, and  "victims of crime" who have suffered primarily from Mother Nature and from a lack of love in childhood.

What in the Soviet era was explained as a "class" difference, Rubinstein interprets in modern terms as an anthropological one:

Isn't it because most of these new "hooligans" conduct themselves so honourably and bravely in the shameful courts and in the prisons, and because they are perfectly aware of their own value and of the value of those institutions.They are simply unable to talk to the goblins and gnomes in their language, that language called "cooperation with the investigation". It's an anthropological incompatibility.
....
No, what governs here is not only the "social imperative". What rules here, as in a Greek tragedy, is not only fate, which has taken up residence in our great city behind red brick walls.
"Here, dear sir, is anthropology," as some character from Dostoyevsky might say in this or another connection.   

Letter to Khodorkovsky and Lebedev

Letter from Committee to MBK and PLL 30 December 2010

Dear Mr Khodorkovsky, dear Mr Lebedev

We have read today with gratitude your message of encouragement to your supporters: “Our combined efforts have not been without success. A regime without the law is like a stool without legs. It looks foolish and the future is unpredictable.” Yours is the moral victory.

The rulers now in power in the Russian Federation have subverted the rule of law, but that is not all. They have betrayed the high ideals set forth in the Constitution. They have subverted democracy itself. They have installed and maintained a corrupt kleptocracy and brought dishonour on their country. By their misdeeds they have brought Russia into disrepute among the nations of the world. They have reinvented the mock trial for our new century. They are the men of yesterday.

The regime has demonstrated its lack of conviction, its absence of courage, by the decision to defer the announcement of the sentences until the last moments of the year, in the hope that the news of this renewed injustice will not be much noticed.

Your supporters around the world have not been discouraged by the weak, illogical decisions of the judge in your case, since it is clear that he has not been able to withstand the pressures imposed on him by those in power. Instead, we take encouragement from the moral pressure now on President Dmitry Medvedev to exercise his prerogative and to use the constitutional Presidential Pardon available to him, as is his undoubted right and his clear duty.

We take courage also from the idea that the overwhelming struggle of humanity is for justice and morality everywhere, and the weight of all humanity cannot, finally, be defeated by perverted men temporarily in positions of power.

We thank you for the moral stand you have taken against injustice, and the courage you have shown during your long ordeal. We wish you health and good spirits to enable you to withstand the difficulties ahead of you; and we assure you of our continuing support until the day when you are set free and can return to your families and loved ones.

On behalf of the Committee to Free Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev

Jeremy Putley, United Kingdom

Maren Koop, Germany

Cliff Esler, Canada