Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova was moved to solitary confinement today, a day after she began a hunger strike to protest the inhuman conditions at the Russian penal colony where she is imprisoned. Prison authorities said they were moving her to solitary for her own safety, not as a punishment, after Tolokonnikova said she received death threats.
In an open letter, she stated, "I demand that the colony administration respect human rights; I demand that the Mordovia camp function in accordance with the law. I demand that we be treated like human beings, not slaves."
Tolokonnikova and two other members of Pussy Riot performed what they called a "punk prayer" against Russian President Vladimir Putin on the altar of Russia's most prominent orthodox church in early 2012. She and another member were found guilty of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" and are currently serving two-year sentences.
Last December, Russian conductor Valery Gergiev commented about the incident to The Independent, "I don't think this is anything to do with artistic freedom. Why go to the Cathedral of Christ to make a political statement? Why with screaming and dancing? You don't need to go to a place that is considered sacred by many people."
Gergiev added: "I am told by too many people that those girls are potentially a very good business proposition. Suppose that someone created all this in order to produce another touring group earning millions and millions? Anna Netrebko didn't need to do something like this."
One wonders what Gergiev's response would be to Tolokonnikova's letter, which is a reminder that human rights abuses still exist in Russia.
She writes: "My brigade in the sewing shop works 16 to 17 hours a day. From 7:30 a.m. to 12:30 a.m. At best, we get four hours of sleep a night. We have a day off once every month and a half. We work almost every Sunday..."
"For the maintenance of discipline and obedience, there is a widely implemented system of unofficial punishments. Prisoners are forced to 'stay in the lokalka [a fenced-off passageway between two areas in the camp] until lights out'...whether it be autumn or winter. In the second brigade, consisting of the disabled and elderly, there was a woman who ended up getting such bad frostbite after a day in the lokalka they had to amputate her fingers and one of her feet..."
Tolokonnikova's sewing brigade has to meet quotas of completed uniforms, which she says kept rising, despite using old equipment that kept breaking down. She observes that "...others are beaten up. For not being able to keep up. They hit them in the kidneys, in the face. Prisoners themselves deliver these beatings and not a single one of them is done without the approval and full knowledge of the administration...No one dares complain to the administration because all they will do is smile and send the prisoner back into the unit, where the 'snitch' will be beaten on the orders of that same administration. For the colony administration, controlled hazing is a convenient method for forcing prisoners into total submission to their systemic abuse of human rights."
Some of the punishments Tolokonnikova describes in her letter are similar to those in A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Alexander Solzhenitsyn's description of a Soviet labor camp.
Her letter continues, of course, describing the deplorable hygiene conditions in the prison.
In response to this letter, prison officials claim that they are mounting an investigation, although they deny all of Tolokonnikova's statements regarding the conditions of the prison, itself.
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