A jailed member of Russia's Pussy Riot punk band has started a hunger strike to protest "slave labor" in her penal colony, claiming she received death threats from a senior colony official, who in turn said he was blackmailed by her husband and lawyer.
23-year-old Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, along with two other band
members, was sentenced to two years in jail in August 2012 after
performing what they called a "punk prayer" in a landmark Moscow
cathedral. The court found them guilty of aggravated hooliganism
and religious hatred for staging their ‘Mother of God drive Putin
away’ stunt in the Christ the Savior cathedral in February 2012.
Mother to a five-year-old daughter, Tolokonnikova is currently in
Penal Colony No.14 in the Mordovia region, 400 kilometers
southeast of Moscow.
"Beginning September 23, I am going on hunger strike. It’s an
extreme method, but I am fully convinced that this is the only
way out of my current situation," Tolokonnikova wrote in a
letter, released to the media.
"I demand that the colony administration respect human rights,
I demand that the law in the Mordovia camp is observed. I demand
that we are treated like human beings, not slaves," she
wrote. Tolokonnikova claims inmates are forced to work up
to 17 hours a day sewing police uniforms.
"My brigade in the sewing shop works 16-17 hours per day, from
7.30 am to 00.30am. In the best case scenario, you will sleep
about 4 hours. There’s a day-off once in 40 days. We work almost
every Sunday. Prisoners submit petitions to work on weekends "by
choice." In reality, of course, nobody wants to [work]. But these
petitions are written on the order of the administration, under
pressure from the convicts broadcasting the will of their
superiors," she said.
In late July the supreme court of Mordovia confirmed that
Tolokonnikova must continue to serve her sentence after the lower
court rejected her request for parole. The district court
explained the refusal by the remands and negative reports on the
prisoner from the penal colony’s administration.
Tolokonnikova says Mordovia penal colonies are notorious among
prisoners, a fact she was aware of even before she was sent
there.
“As the convicts here say, ‘Those who never did time in the
Mordovia jail, never did time at all’. I started hearing about
the Mordovia prison colonies while I was still held at the
Pre-Trial Detention Centre No 6 in Moscow. They have the toughest
levels of security, the longest working hours, and the worst
rights violation. When they send you off to Mordovia, it’s as if
you're headed to the scaffold. Until the very last moment, you
keep hoping ‘Maybe, they won't send you to Mordovia? Maybe it
will blow over?"’ Nothing blew over, and in the fall of 2012, I
arrived at the camp region on the banks of the Partsa River,”
she said.
Tolokonnikova recalls that Mordovia greeted her with the words of the deputy head of the penal colony, Lieutenant Colonel Kupriyanov, who is the de facto head of our colony: “'For your knowledge, I’m a Stalinist by my political views,’” he allegedly told her.
Tolokonnikova, who has been in the Mordovia camp in central
Russia for a year, claims she received a death threat from the
camp's deputy head after she complained of the working
conditions. Soon after, she allegedly began to receive threats
from other inmates.
Tolokonnikova said the prison administration tried to pit her
against other fellow prisoners. She claims some women she was
friends with were punished for drinking tea with her.
Tolokonnikova alleged that to maintain discipline and obedience,
a system of “unofficial punishments” is widely used.
According to her, sometimes a prisoner is "forbidden to go
into the barracks, whether it’s autumn or winter; forbidden to
wash themselves or use the bathroom, to eat their own food, or
drink beverages…”
“Dreaming only of sleep and a sip of tea, the harassed
prisoner – exhausted and dirty – becomes obedient putty in
the hands of the administration, which considers us merely free
labor power. In June, my salary was 29 (twenty-nine!) rubles
[about $1]. Meanwhile, our brigade sews 150 police uniforms per
day. Where does the money they get for them go?” she wrote in
her letter.
Regime victim or political provocateur?
Meanwhile, the press office of the Federal Penitentiary Service
(FSIN) claims that Tolokonnikova’s husband Pyotr Verzilov and her
defense attorney Irina Khrunova blackmailed the deputy head of
the colony of Mordovia.
Verzilov and Khrunova allegedly asked the deputy head of the
colony Kupriyanov to transfer Tolokonnikova to a different
brigade, so that she could work in an arts shop. If he refused to
transfer her, they allegedly promised to send a statement to the
prosecutor’s office claiming that Tolokonnikova had received a
death threat from Kupriyanov.
In response Kupriyanov refused to satisfy the demand and filed a
complaint that he was “impelled to commit official
malfeasance”.
The Public Supervisory Commission in the region insists the Pussy
Riot band member exaggerates when writing about 16-17-hour
working days.
“It never happened anywhere,” Commission’s chairman
Gennady Morozov said. “Colonies are being checked regularly by
the prosecutor’s office, by the head of FSIN, and human rights
[groups]. There have never been such complains.”
Morozov personally met Tolokonnikova on Monday and said the woman
“worked mornings” (her shift starts at 8am and finishes at
04:00 pm) and then she “suddenly filed the paper [about
hungerstriking]”. The FSIN press-office said she had
breakfast and announced the strike at 11:45 local time (07:45
GMT).
The Commission said it will check all complaints, but is “sure
that none of them will be confirmed”.