You're reading: Vlasenko tells why female MPs decided to join Tymoshenko’s campaign

Kharkiv – Female MPs joined a civil disobedience campaign of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko after they had examined the premises in which the ex-premier was kept at the Kachanivska Penal Colony, the ex-premier's defense lawyer Serhiy Vlasenko has said. 

“The people’s deputies decided to support the civil disobedience campaign when they saw the contrast between the conditions in which other convicts are kept in the Kachanivska colony, and the conditions in which ex-premier Yulia Tymoshenko is kept,” he told journalists in Kharkiv on Wednesday.

“They visited the Kachanivska colony and they saw the conditions in which other people are kept. No one of them has video surveillance cameras in the cells. The windows in other cells are not covered with tape, other women are not accompanied by guards around the clock, other women are not watched by male guards via displays, and all of the women in the colony can make an unlimited number of phone calls. Yulia Tymoshenko is deprived of such rights,” Vlasenko said.

As reported, female members of the Batkivschyna parliamentary faction came to Kharkiv-based Central Clinical Hospital No. 5 to join former Ukrainian Premier Yulia Tymoshenko’s civil disobedience campaign, and they will not leave the clinic until the ex-premier’s demands are satisfied.

On January 8, Tymoshenko declared a campaign of civil disobedience and announced this in an open letter that was read aloud by her defense lawyer, Serhiy Vlasenko.

The former prime minister said that she refused to recognize the prosecutors and investigators involved in her case and was not going to talk to them anymore. Tymoshenko also said she would not go to court voluntarily, and should they try to bring her to court by force, she would offer every resistance she could. The ex-premier also refused to go back to her hospital ward unless video surveillance and the guard are removed.