Jailed Ukrainian ex-Premier goes on hunger strike

KIEV. April 24. KAZINFORM Jailed Ukrainian ex-prime minister and opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko has declared a hunger strike in what she said was designed to turn the world's attention to the "concentration camp of violence and lawlessness" which she said was being created in Ukraine by President Viktor Yanukovych, RIA Novosti reported.

"I have stopped eating as of April 20 only to achieve one goal: to draw the attention of the democratic world to what has been happening in the middle of Europe, in a country called Ukraine," Tymoshenko said in a statement read out by one of her supporters, lawmaker Sergei Pashinski, during a news briefing in Kiev on Tuesday.

"The fate of modern Ukrainian political prisoners is not the issue; we are ready to continue along our way with honor, whatever it is," she said. "The problem is different; it lies in the understanding that the incumbent Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych is creating a concentration camp of violence and lawlessness in the middle of Europe."

Tymoshenko has been sentenced to seven years in prison after a Ukrainian court found her guilty of abusing her power by pushing through a gas deal with Russia in 2009. Her trial was declared "politically motivated" by both Russia and the European Union.

She has also been charged with attempting to embezzle $405 million of government funds during the 1990s, when she headed Ukraine's state corporation United Energy Systems.

The former Ukrainian prime minister maintains her innocence in both cases.

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