Vitaly Novikov said he is feeling tired, dizzy and decades older than his actual age while enduring his month-long hunger strike at an immigration detention center in Southwest Georgia.
In a telephone interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Monday, Novikov, 62, said he has lost about 35 pounds while protesting his impending deportation. The retired machine shop worker, who fled persecution in the Soviet Union as a Pentecostal Christian 28 years ago, worries he will be killed if he is deported to his native Donetsk amid fierce fighting there between Ukrainian troops and Russian-backed separatists.
Concerned about Vitaly's health, a federal court in Georgia this month took the extraordinary step of giving U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement permission to force-feed him and restrain him if he resists at the Stewart Detention Center. Human rights workers are condemning that court decision while questioning ICE's competence following the suicide of a fellow Stewart detainee last week.
Novikov said ICE hasn’t attempted to force-feed him yet. He added he would continue his hunger strike until he is released from detention and would commit suicide if he is expelled to Ukraine.
“I’m 62 years old. And starting a new life — this is late,” he said, adding he suffers from depression and memory loss as well as from injuries he suffered from a motorcycle accident many years ago.
ICE spokesman Bryan Cox said he could not comment on Novikov’s medical care, citing privacy rules. But he did confirm a Stewart detainee was on “hunger strike status” Monday.
In an opinion piece sent to The AJC Monday, Physicians for Human Rights, a New York City-based humanitarian group, said force-feeding Novikov would be “inhuman and degrading.”
“The force-feeding of competent hunger strikers is a form of inhuman and degrading treatment,” wrote Dr. Homer Venters, the group’s director of programs and the former chief medical officer for New York City’s jail system. “It’s ethically and clinically unjustifiable, and no health professional should ever take part in it.
“In authorizing the force-feeding of Vitaly Novikov, U.S. District Judge Leslie Abrams also greenlit a range of abusive practices, including the medically unnecessary use of restraints. It is unethical to restrain patients for punishment or to facilitate abuse.”
Cox defended his agency’s practices Monday.
“In general, ICE fully respects the rights of all people to voice their opinion without interference,” he said in a prepared statement. “ICE does not retaliate in any way against hunger strikers. ICE explains the negative health effects of not eating to our detainees. For their health and safety, ICE closely monitors the food and water intake of those detainees identified as being on a hunger strike.”
Novikov was admitted to the U.S. as a refugee in 1989 and obtained a green card three years later. In February, he was convicted of aggravated domestic violence in Anderson, S.C., and sentenced to 10 years behind bars. He said Monday he was not guilty in the case. Last month, an Immigration Court judge ordered him deported.
Novikov’s siblings are worried about his health.
“He called my brother here last week, and my brother told him, ‘Just get a meal. Start eating,’” Alexey Novikov, who lives in Greenville, S.C., said of Vitaly, his older brother. “And he told him if they are going to deport him he is not going to eat at all. He would rather die than get deported.”
Tatyana Marchuk, a sister who lives in the Spartanburg area, is also concerned.
“I hope they help him with some medical attention,” she said. “We are not sure what is going on there.”
She said she is particularly concerned about what would happen to him if he were sent to Donetsk amid the deadly violence there.
“They will think he is the enemy, not a friend,” she said.
Novikov is the third ICE detainee in Georgia to make headlines this month. On Monday of last week, authorities at Stewart discovered a Panamanian national had committed suicide by hanging himself in his solitary confinement cell. He had been isolated for 19 days. A day later, an Indian national who ICE was holding at the Atlanta City Detention Center died at Grady Memorial Hospital from what the government says were complications from congestive heart failure.
Meanwhile, Novikov said he feels as if he has aged considerably while on his hunger strike.
“I’m not strong,” he said. “I am feeling like maybe 100 years old, maybe more. So tired. So tired – like so close that I am dead.”
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