A protest activist arrested in the Russian city of Ufa, the republic of Bashkortostan in the Volga Federal District, went on a hunger strike on Friday, his lawyer reported.
Police arrested Kirill Mikhailov, an activist of the Golos Ufy (Voice of Ufa) youth organization, on Thursday for distribution of political leaflets that police said had been manufactured illegally.
“The man resisted arrest… Mikhailov was fined 1,000 rubles [$34] and given a 10-day jail term,” a police spokesman told RIA Novosti.
His lawyer, Ildar Kurbanov, said the hunger strike was in protest against the jail term that Mikhailov said was given illegally.
Kurbanov also lamented that he was denied meeting with the detainee for several hours.
According to Golos Ufy, Mikhailov is one of the organizers of rallies in his city following the December 4 parliamentary elections in Russia that critics claimed were marred by vote rigging.
The organization’s participants have organized weekly protests for fair elections in Ufa since the December polls, which authorities admitted had only minor irregularities that did not affect the vote results.
