Tag Archives: Pussy Riot

Pussy Riot’s Nadezhda Tolokonnikova Now In Solitary Confinement

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Photo by Denis Bochkarev.
Photo by Denis Bochkarev.

Pussy Riot’s Nadezhda Tolokonnikova has been placed in solitary confinement at Penal Colony No 14, according to Amnesty International, following her whistle blowing open letter about alleged abuses at the detention facility.

The human rights organization is calling for an investigation into the abuses Tolokonnikova wrote about. The detention facility where she is serving a two-year sentence for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” is located in the Mordovia region, southeast of Moscow.

Tolokonnikova’s open letter began circulating via the internet earlier this week and was published  on The Guardian website.

“The prison administration claimed that Nadezhda Tolokonnikova had been placed in isolation for her own protection, but we are concerned this could be yet another punishment for demanding that her own rights and the rights of other inmates are respected,” Sergei Nikitin, Director of Amnesty International’s office in Moscow, said in a statement on the Amnesty website. “What authorities should do is investigate the allegations she made.”

“The case against members of the band Pussy Riot has been consistently outrageous from start to finish,” Nikitin continued, “and sought nothing other than to undermine the band members’ right to freedom of expression. The Russian authorities must immediately and unconditionally release the activists and quash all charges against them.”

For more, go to the Amnesty International site.

 

 

Pussy Riot’s Nadezhda Tolokonnikova’s Open Letter About Penal Colony Brutality

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It’s now been widely reported that Pussy Riot’s Nadezhda Tolokonnikova has started a hunger strike to protest conditions at Russia’s Penal Colony No 14, where she has been serving a two-year sentence since August of 2012 after being convicted of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.”

But most people haven’t read the actual text of Tolokonnikova’s open letter (published on Monday, Sept. 23, 2013 in The Guardian), in which she announced her hunger strike. You should read it.

Here’s the letter.

 

Jailed Pussy Riot Member Starts Hunger Strike

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Nadezhda_Tolokonnikova_(Pussy_Riot)_at_the_Moscow_Tagansky_District_Court_-_Denis_Bochkarev

Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova has announced that she has begun a hunger strike to protest “slavery-like conditions” at the prison camp in the remote Russian region of Mordovia where she is incarcerated, the New York Times reports.

In the letter, which was published on the Lenta.ru news service, Tolokonnikova described beatings of inmates by other inmates on the face or kidneys. She said that she has not been beaten but wrote that they “never happen without the knowledge and sanction of the prison authorities.”

She wrote that the prisoners in her sewing division must work 16 or 17 hours a day. “In the best case scenario we get four hours of sleep per night,” she wrote. “We get a day off once every six weeks. Almost all Sundays are work days. Prisoners are forced to write requests to work on weekends saying it is their own voluntary decision.”

Explaining her motivation for the hunger strike, she wrote, “I refuse to participate in slave labor at the camp until the penal colony authorities begin to work under the law and treat women inmates as people rather than cattle.”

For more on this story, go to the New York Times or The Guardian.