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Vol. 82/No. 4 January 29, 2018
Pussy Riot speaks out about fight against prison conditions in Russia
BY EMMA JOHNSON
Pussy Riot members Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova became
known around the world for performing a “punk prayer” against the regime
of President Vladimir Putin in Moscow’s Russian Orthodox Cathedral of
Christ in February 2012 that led to two-year prison sentences for
“hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.”
They were sent to separate penal colonies in the Siberian Gulag. While
in prison they organized with fellow prisoners to fight horrendous work
and living conditions. They both went on hunger strikes several times
and won release in December 2013.
“My brigade in the sewing shop works 16 to 17 hours a day from 7:30 a.m.
to 12:30 a.m.,” Tolokonnikova wrote in a five-page open letter from
prison. “At best we get four hours of sleep a night. I demand we be
treated like human beings. I will not remain silent, resigned to watch
as my fellow prisoners collapse under the strain of slavery-like
conditions.”
In a lengthy interview with the Financial Times printed Jan. 5,
Alyokhina explained why the fight against prison conditions in Russia
has been at the center of what they do since getting out of jail.
“People came up to me and Nadya and said, ‘Girls, if you don’t change
this, if you don’t tell people about it, then no one will,’” she said.
“I’ve got five huge cardboard boxes in my attic with all the letters
that people sent me for the two years I was in prison. They told their
own stories. And for many people our story became the reason for changes
in their life.”
Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova helped set up Zona Prava, a human rights
group, and Mediazona, a news site that focuses on the injustices of
Russia’s court and prison system.
Alyokhina explains she refuses to stop speaking out or to be driven out
of Russia.
Over the past two years Alyokhina has performed her play “Burning Doors”
with the Belarus Free Theatre, including in the U.S., United Kingdom,
Australia and Italy. It tells her own story and that of two other
targets of Moscow’s repression — Oleg Sentsov, a Ukrainian nationalist
and filmmaker from Crimea, and Russian performance artist Petr
Pavlensky, who sewed his lips together to protest the jailing of the
Pussy Riot members.
In August, Alyokhina was arrested in Yakutia, Siberia, where Sentsov is
detained. Along with another Pussy Riot member she hung a large banner
saying “Free Sentsov” across a bridge near the prison.
Sentsov was framed up on charges of being part of a “terrorist
conspiracy” and sentenced to 20 years. He had helped to deliver food to
Ukrainian soldiers trapped on their bases following Moscow’s occupation
of Crimea in February 2014.
“It’s important to be consistent,” Alyokhina says. “Don’t quit what
you’ve started, don’t give up, don’t walk away. It’s important that
those aren’t just words.”
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