(Reuters) - Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has complained of being poisoned, assaulted and deprived of proper medical care, but on Monday he disclosed he faced a new challenge: being forced to listen to a pro-Putin pop singer at 0500 every morning.
Navalny, 47, a former lawyer who rose to prominence more than a decade ago by lampooning President Vladimir Putin’s elite and voicing allegations of vast corruption, is currently in a jail about 60 km (40 miles) north of the Arctic Circle.
Sentenced to stay in prison until he is 74 on charges he says were trumped up to keep him out of politics, Navalny said his morning regime now consisted of listening to the Russian national anthem before being played “I am Russian,” a patriotic song performed by a pro-Putin singer called “Shaman”.
I was laughing at the thought of music being used, not the entire compound. But as someone linked an article explaining how much worse it is, I retract my statement of amusement ☹️
I know of at least one band whose music has been reportedly used in Gitmo for torture purposes. Skinny Puppy’s album Weapon was written in response to that, and the band billed the US government $666,000 for the unlicensed usage of their music.