BBC News, 22
October 2012
Female inmates in Russia are often used to work in the field outside penal colonies |
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Two members
of Russian all-female punk band Pussy Riot, Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda
Tolokonnikova, have been sent to prison camps in Perm and Mordovia - to what
Tolokonnikova's husband has described as "jail hell". Svetlana
Bakhmina, a former lawyer for the now defunct Yukos oil company jailed in 2006,
recalls her time in one of the "tough" penal colonies in Mordovia,
south-east of Moscow.
"I was
sent to the FGU IK-14 prison camp six years to the day before Tolokonnikova.
The place
could be best described as a tough, Soviet-style camp.
The inmates
were all housed in two big army-style barracks - there were anywhere between 50
and 100 people in each one.
The
barracks were built in the Soviet times - I guess in the 1920s.
All you've
got inside are rows of bunkbeds, a night stand and a stool.
There is
also a toilet but you cannot use it as there is no central sewage system. We
used to go outside to the so-called 'hole', sometimes when it was -20C in the
winter.
In general,
the climate in that remote swampy place surrounded by forest was just awful -
cold winters and midges in the summer. In addition, there was a nuclear
facility about 70km [44 miles] away from our camps.
The
administration was very strict with us - rumours of beatings circled around the
colony, although I didn't witness any personally. More often there were fights
between the inmates themselves.
Mass
beatings are usually a feature of male camps - the so-called 'black colonies'.
There was
no torture in FGU IK-14, but anyone disobeying the prison rules would be
punished by getting sent to "shiza" [Russian abbreviation for
schizophrenia] - a solitary cell.
The daily
routine was also strict - they would wake us up at 06:00, and we would have
morning exercises five minutes later. We had breakfast at 07:00, then work
until 13:00 when we would have lunch. There was more work after that until
16:00, followed by dinner. Lights out was at 22:00."
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