AFP

KHARKIV (UKRAINE) UKRAINE’s jailed ex-premier Yulia Tymoshenko has been on a hunger strike for the past five days to protest against her treatment and demand an end to political repression, her lawyer said on Tuesday.

“Yulia Tymoshenko began a hunger strike on Friday,” her lawyer Serhiy Vlasenko said after visiting Tymoshenko in the eastern city of Kharkiv where she has been jailed since last year on abuse-ofoffice charges.

“It’s an unlimited hunger strike. She is calling for an end to political repressions in Ukraine,” her lawyer said.

The flamboyant but divisive 2004 Orange Revolution leader was jailed for seven years for negotiating a gas deal with Russia while prime minister in 2009 that the new administration says was against Ukraine’s interests.

Tymoshenko, 51, has complained of ill health in jail and asked to have treatment abroad. She began her hunger strike after she said she was forcibly taken to a local hospital on Friday evening.

Her lawyer Vlasenko read out a statement in which Tymoshenko complained of being beaten by prison staff and dragged to an ambulance against her will.

“Three strong men came up to my bed, threw a sheet on me and then started pulling me off the bed by force. In my pain and despair I defended myself as I could, and I received ... a strong blow in the stomach,” Tymoshenko said in the statement.

“They tied up my arms and legs and ... dragged me out in the sheet,” she said. “I thought it was the last minutes of my life.” Her lawyer told journalists outside the prison earlier that “her arms were covered with bruises and she had a large bruise on her stomach, which is still visible four days after it happened.” Tymoshenko has complained of debilitating back pain that last week kept her from attending the start of a new trial on tax evasion charges that could see her time in jail extended from seven to 12 years.

She has expressed fears that local doctors could poison her or infect her with a disease and demanded that the hospital be checked by a team of German doctors who examined her in prison earlier this year.

Ukrainian authorities have already been forced to deny suggestions that they were in any way linked to the 2004 poisoning of former president Viktor Yanukovych, a close Tymoshenko ally during the pro-democracy protests.