Tymoshenko starts ‘civil disobedience’

KHARKIV - Agence France-Presse

Yulia Tymoshenko, AFP photo

Jailed Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko has launched a “campaign of civil disobedience” and spent the night in a shower of hospital, a prison official said yesterday.

Tymoshenko who has been sentenced to seven years in jail for abuse of power while in office and is in hospital for treatment for back pain, said Jan. 8 that she no longer recognized the country’s judicial authorities. As part of what she called her “personal campaign of civil disobedience,” the co-leader of Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution said she would no longer appear in court or cooperate with investigators and prosecutors.

“The time for my patience and tolerance is over,” she said in a statement. Then, she “moved into a shower room and spent the night there,” said Andrei Lapinsky, a top prison official in the Kharkiv region where Tymoshenko is serving out her sentence. There was a trestle bed in the shower room and Tymoshenko also was given a blanket, Lapinsky told reporters.