Dr Koryagin: Part II
Sir: May I bring up to date my letter (3 March) about Dr Anatoly Koryagin, the imprisoned Russian psychiatrist? The American Psychiatric Association, of which Dr Koryagin is an honorary member, has recently received a smuggled letter from him, dated 30 December 1983.
Dr Koryagin writes: [On] 10 December 1982 I sent a statement to the Praesidium of the Supreme Soviet that I refused to accept food in norms less than the physiological minimum .... They threw me in the punishment cell, where they tortured me brutally. On 11 January 1983 I announced that I refused to live in a Bolshevik torture chamber. I fasted six months and two weeks. They fed my by force. They employed physical and psychological torture . . .
'They have increased the terror; they are punishing people for refusing to talk with the KGB, for conducting hunger strikes, for filing complaints. I... [am] on two months of strict regime with reduced food rations. I have announced a hunger strike for this period. As a doctor, I protest about the criminal Soviet laws according to which they starve prisoners. This is a crime against people's health and life. Pass on this message to the doctors of the world through the press. I am fighting for the right to health and life. I will be glad of their support. I am exhausted, I am experiencing heart pains, and
my body is swollen, but I
will continue the hunger strike: I will not eat the reduced norm. They are force feeding me through a tube.'
Fiona Mackenzie,
Working Group on the Internment of Dissenters in Mental Hospitals, 12 Rosemary Cottages, Rosemary Lane, London SW14
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