Navalny moved to penal colony outside Moscow
POKROV, Russia — Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has been transferred to a penal colony outside Moscow to serve his prison sentence, a public commission said on Sunday, weeks after he returned to Russia after being poisoned.
Navalny's whereabouts had been unknown since Thursday when his allies learned that he was transferred out of one of Moscow's most infamous jails to an undisclosed location.
Navalny, 44, was arrested on his return from Germany last month and has been sentenced to more than 2- 1/2 years for parole violations that he said were trumped up.
He has been transferred to a penal colony in the Vladimir region, the Moscow Public Monitoring Commission that defends the rights of prisoners and has access to people in custody, said on its website.
The state news agency TASS specified that Navalny will serve his term in penal colony number 2 in the town of Pokrov, about 100 kilometres east of Moscow.
Reuters pictures showed metallic grey buildings behind a grey fence and barbed wire inside the colony, as well as the gold domes of a church. A guard at the gate asked reporters to keep a distance of at least 100 metres (yards) if they wanted to film it.
Ruslan Vakhapov, a local activist of the prisoners' rights group Jailed Russia, described conditions as particularly severe.
"In short, it's a bad colony," Ruslan Vakhapov told Reuters by phone.
Many prisoners cooperate with the colony administration and help them to control other inmates closely, abusing them if they violate a strict daily schedule, Vakhapov said.
"If there is a need to prevent Navalny from communicating with others, nobody would talk to him," the activist said.
"(If anything happens), he wouldn't be able to ask for help until his lawyer arrives," he added.
A duty officer who took a call at the prison declined to answer questions about Navalny.
Navalny will be quarantined as a precaution against the spread of coronavirus before joining other prisoners in the colony, the monitoring commission said, according to the RIA news agency.
Earlier on Sunday a Navalny ally, Leonid Volkov, called on Twitter for authorities to provide official information about his whereabouts and access to him by his lawyers.
Navalny, President Vladimir Putin's most prominent critic, suffered a near-fatal poisoning in Siberia in August with what many Western nations said was a nerve agent. Navalny accuses Putin of ordering his attempted murder.
Putin has dismissed that, alleging Navalny is part of a U.s.-backed dirty tricks campaign to discredit him.
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BLANDIN, Louis P.,
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BOWERS, Hollis L.,
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BRAUNERT, Edith "May",
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CORDEAU (Byrne), Maria C.,
Dartmouth
DOUCETTE, Wilena C.,
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FLYNN, Mary E.,
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Lawrencetown
GOODWIN, Fred A.,
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HARTLING, Charles A. "Chuck",
Trenton
HASSALL, Charles "Charlie",
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New Waterford/whitney Pier
INNES, Keith B.,
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KAISER (Knowlton), Barbara F.,
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RICHTER, Caroline J.,
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WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump on Sunday hinted at a possible run for president again in 2024, attacked President Joe Biden, and repeated his fraudulent claims that he won the 2020 election in his first major appearance since leaving the White House nearly six weeks ago.
"Our movement of proud, hard-working American patriots is just getting started, and in the end we will win. We will win," Trump said in a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla.
Refusing to admit he lost the Nov. 3 presidential election to Joe Biden, Trump offered a withering critique of his Democratic successor's first weeks in office and suggested he might run again.
"They just lost the White House," the Republican former president said after criticizing Biden's handling of border security. "But who knows, who knows, I may even decide to beat them for a third time."
Trump's tumultuous final weeks in office saw his supporters launch a deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in an attempt to block Congress from certifying Biden's election victory, a win that Trump falsely claimed was tainted by widespread fraud.
A civil war has erupted within the Republican Party with establishment figures like Senate minority leader Mitch Mcconnell eager to put Trump in the rearview mirror and others, like Trump ally Senator Lindsey Graham, believing the party's future depends on the energy of the pro-trump conservative base.
Trump declared the Republican Party is united and said he had no plans to try to launch a third party, an idea he has discussed with advisers in the last couple of months.
"We're not starting new parties. We have the Republican Party. It's going to be united and be stronger than ever before. I am not starting a new party," he said.
The results of a straw poll of CPAC conference participants gave Trump a strong show of support with 55 per cent saying they would vote for him in the 2024 Republican presidential nomination race. Florida Governor Ron Desantis came in second place with 21 per cent.
Without Trump, Desantis led the field with 43 per cent, and other potential Republican candidates had single digits.
But not everyone supported Trump. A separate question on the poll asked whether Trump should run again in 2024 and it led to a mixed result, with 68 per cent saying he should run and 32 per cent saying opposed or having no opinion.
"It's tough to get seven out of 10 to agree on anything," pollster Jim Mclaughlin told CPAC in explaining away the results.
Still, Trump fervor at the four-day CPAC event has been so strong that Trump's eldest son Donald Trump Jr. declared it T-PAC and participants rolled out a golden statue of the former president.
In the short term, he is making plans to set up a super PAC political organization to support candidates who mirror his policies, an adviser said.
Starting his speech more than an hour late, Trump said he wanted to save the culture and identity of the United States.
He sought to position himself as the lead critic of the new president, including on immigration and security along the U.S. border with Mexico, and the slow reopening of schools closed due to the pandemic.
"Joe Biden has had the most disastrous first month of any president in modern history," Trump said.
Recent polls have given Biden a job approval rating well past 50 per cent, a strong showing from Americans.
The Biden White House has made it clear it plans to ignore Trump's speech.
“Our focus is certainly not on what President Trump is saying” at CPAC, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters last week.
Myanmar police fired on protesters around the country on Sunday and at least 18 people were killed in the worst violence since a Feb. 1 military coup, the United Nations said, calling on the international community to act to stop the repression.
Crowds of demonstrators came under fire in various parts of the biggest city of Yangon after stun grenades, tear gas and shots in the air failed to break up their protests.
Across the country, protesters wearing plastic work helmets and with makeshift shields faced off against police and soldiers in battle gear, including some from units notorious for tough crackdowns on ethnic rebel groups in Myanmar's border regions.
"Severe action will be inevitably taken" against "riotous protesters", the state-run Global New Light Of Myanmar said. The army had previously shown restraint, but could not ignore "anarchic mobs".
Several wounded people were hauled away in Yangon by fellow protesters, leaving bloody smears on pavements, media images showed. One man died after arriving at a hospital with a bullet in the chest, said a doctor who asked not to be identified.
"Police and military forces have confronted peaceful demonstrations, using lethal force and less-than-lethal force that — according to credible information received by the UN Human Rights Office — has left at least 18 people dead and over 30 wounded," the UN human rights office said.
Myanmar has been in chaos since the army seized power and detained elected government leader Aung San Suu Kyi and much of her party leadership on Feb. 1, alleging fraud in a November election her party won in a landslide.
The coup, which brought a halt to tentative steps towards democracy after nearly 50 years of military rule, has drawn hundreds of thousands onto the streets and the condemnation of Western countries.
Among at least five killed in Yangon was internet network engineer Nyi Nyi Aung Htet Naing, medics said. A day earlier he had asked on Facebook how many dead bodies it would take for the United Nations to take action.
UN Secretary-general Antonio Guterres called on its members to do more.
"The Secretary-general urges the international community to come together and send a clear signal to the military that it must respect the will of the people of Myanmar as expressed through the election and stop the repression,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
Teacher Tin New Yee died after police swooped to disperse a teachers' protest with stun grenades, sending the crowd fleeing, her daughter and a fellow teacher said.
Outside a Yangon medical school, doctors and students in white lab coats scattered after police hurled stun grenades. A group called the Whitecoat Alliance of medics said more than 50 medical staff had been arrested.
Three people were killed at Dawei in the south, politician Kyaw Min Htike told Reuters from the town. Two died in the second city of Mandalay, Myanmar Now media and a resident said. Resident Sai Tun told Reuters one woman was shot in the head.
Police and the spokesman for the ruling military council did not respond to phone calls seeking comment.
Police broke up protests in other towns, including Lashio in the northeast, Myeik in the deep south and Hpa-an in the east, residents and media said.
‘OUTRAGEOUS’
Junta leader General Min Aung Hlaing said last week authorities were using minimal force.
Nevertheless, at least 21 protesters have now died in the turmoil. The army said a policeman had been killed.
Defiance of the coup has emerged not just on the streets but more broadly in the civil service, municipal administration, the judiciary, the education and health sectors and the media.
Activists across Asia held protests in support, with the rallying cry "Milk Tea Alliance" which first united prodemocracy activists in Thailand and Hong Kong.
State-run MRTV television said more than 470 people were arrested on Saturday. It was not clear how many were detained on Sunday.
"We are heartbroken to see the loss of so many lives in Myanmar," the U.S. embassy said. The Canadian Embassy said it was appalled. Indonesia, which has taken a diplomatic lead within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on the crisis, expressed deep concern.
Youth activist Esther Ze Naw said people were battling the fear they had lived with under military rule.
While some Western countries have imposed limited sanctions, the generals have traditionally shrugged off diplomatic pressure. They have promised to hold a new election but not set a date.
Suu Kyi's party and supporters said the result of the November vote must be respected.
Suu Kyi, 75, who spent nearly 15 years under house arrest, faces charges of illegally importing six walkie-talkie radios and of violating a natural disaster law by breaching coronavirus protocols. The next hearing in her case is on Monday.