Google – AFP, Anna Smolchenko (AFP), 29 Sep 2013
 |
"Pussy
Riot" punk Nadezhda Tolokonnikova waits in the defendant's cage at
a
courthouse in Zubova Polyana, on April 26, 2013 (AFP/File, Maksim Blinov)
|
Moscow —
Jailed hunger-striking Pussy Riot punk band member, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, who
is refusing food in protest over what she has called murder threats and
"slave labour conditions," was on Sunday moved to a hospital, an
official said.
An officer
on duty at the hospital No 21 in the village of Barashevo in the Mordovia
region said that Tolokonnikova, who entered her seventh day of hunger strike on
Sunday, was moved earlier in the day.
"Doctors
accepted her," Major Sergei Shalin told AFP by phone. The hospital is part
of the prison system but is located outside Tolokonnikova's penal colony.
Tolokonnikova's
husband, activist Pyotr Verzilov, said several sources among prison employees
and inmates had told him his wife had been moved from prison.
"We
are now outside the hospital," he told AFP, adding he would seek a meeting
with his wife.
Mordovia's
prison administration later released a statement, confirming Tolokonnikova had
agreed to be moved to the hospital so that her health could be monitored.
Earlier
Sunday, Verzilov issued an open letter addressed to the head of the Federal
Service for the Execution of Punishment which oversees prisons, complaining
that Tolokonnikova had been held incommunicado for more than 60 hours.
Tolokonnikova
went on a hunger strike on Monday, releasing an open letter in which she
described harrowing conditions at her prison.
Female
inmates have to work for up to 17 hours, sleep four hours and endure repeated
abuse, she claimed. Tolokonnikova also complained of what she said were death
threats from the prison's deputy chief over her complaints.
On the
fifth day of her hunger strike Friday, Tolokonnikova was moved to the medical
unit of her penal colony after her health worsened.
Verzilov's
Voina (War) art group described her condition at the time as
"terrible."
Tolokonnikova
said she would refuse food until she's transferred to another prison.
The
23-year-old mother of a young daughter is serving a two-year sentence for a
punk protest against President Vladimir Putin in a Moscow church last year.
Observers
have said that the unrepentant activist was deliberately sent to Mordovia --
notorious for its network of Soviet-era Gulag prison camps -- in a bid to break
her will.
The open
letter came after the counterculture activist had over the past year sought to
come to terms with her imprisonment, sharing philosophy books with her fellow
inmates and learning to sew police uniforms.
Pressure
began to build when she tried to stand up for prisoners' rights, her defence
said.
She claimed
several prisoners were forced to sew in the workshop naked as punishment for
working slowly.
A system of
collective punishment and a culture of violence saw prison staff encouraging
inmates to beat up rule-breakers.
'The icy
breath of the Gulag'
Tolokonnikova's
lawyer Irina Khrunova, speaking to opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta in an
interview released on Saturday, said HIV patients were forced to work on a par
with healthy prisoners, noting prison administration had pitted Tolokonnikova
against other inmates.
"She
had porridge poured over her head in a canteen," Khrunova said. "It's
difficult to imagine what you feel when you stand alone with 500 people against
you, and everyone wants you dead."
Tolokonnikova's
hunger strike and letter drew fresh attention to routine prisoner abuse in
Russia. Prison management denies the charges.
Political
analyst Alexander Golts said Tolokonnikova's description of the "monstrous
detention conditions" shocked many in Russia.
"This
is an icy breath of the Gulag," he wrote on the opposition online portal
ej.ru.
"Hundreds
of today's inmates, the tens of thousands who have already gone through this
hell take all these tortures in stride. They are not trying to protest, are not
trying to punish their tormentors. They have been crushed."
Tolokonnikova
and the other jailed Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina are scheduled for
release in March.
Alyokhina
has also repeatedly complained about prisoner rights abuses in her prison
colony in the Perm region.
President
Putin has called the women's sentence correct and repeatedly defended the tough
verdict from criticism by Western leaders including German Chancellor Angela
Merkel and celebrities like Madonna.
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