Tina Zmaeff, 62, was taken by ambulance from Matsqui about 2 a.m. after a doctor determined hospital care was necessary because of "severe dehydration," [Dianne Brown] said.

[Doug Roberts] force-fed both women and two other Doukhobor women in 1983 when he was a medical officer at the William Head prison and the Wilkinson Road Jail in Victoria. That was before a B.C. Court of Appeal ruling that prisons have no right to force-feed prisoners.

One of two Freedomite Doukhobor women on the 64th day of a hunger strike was taken today to Vancouver General Hospital where she is in "critical" condition, Corrections spokesman Dianne Brown said.

Tina Zmaeff, 62, was taken by ambulance from Matsqui about 2 a.m. after a doctor determined hospital care was necessary because of "severe dehydration," Brown said.

Mary Braun, meanwhile, continues her fast at Matsqui and is bedridden, but her condition is not as serious as that of Zmaeff, Brown said.

Both women are risking permanent nerve damage and irreversible blindness, a Victoria doctor says.

Dr. Doug Roberts, who looked after the two women on a previous fast, said it's impossible to predict just how long a person can survive without food.

Roberts force-fed both women and two other Doukhobor women in 1983 when he was a medical officer at the William Head prison and the Wilkinson Road Jail in Victoria. That was before a B.C. Court of Appeal ruling that prisons have no right to force-feed prisoners.

Before the court decision, Roberts decided - on his own - it was unethical to force-feed the women when they felt so strongly about what they were doing.

"I came to feel very strongly about it. I came to see them as having no other means of protesting what they saw as unfair. I was taking away their only weapon," he says.

Zmaeff and Braun believe they must fast until they are freed. They are serving an eight-year sentence for arson, an act they consider not to be criminal, but a part of their Doukhobor faith.

"I saw myself as representing what they saw as the enemy," Roberts said.