An incarcerated member of Russian punk band Pussy Riot has released a letter from her penal work colony, stating that she will go on a hunger strike to protest against "slave labor" and harsh conditions in her work camp.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and two other members of the band were arrested in August of last year, after a demonstration called a "punk prayer" that Pussy Riot performed in a cathedral in Moscow against the Orthodox church's support for President Vladimir Putin during his election campaign. A Russian court sentenced Tolokonnikova to two years in jail, Reuters reported.
"Beginning September 23, I am going on hunger strike and refusing to participate in colony slave labor," Tolokonnikova wrote in the letter that her husband Pyotr Verzilov has been distributing.
"I will not remain silent, resigned to watch as my fellow prisoners collapse under the strain of slavery-like conditions. I demand that the colony administration respect human rights; I demand that the Mordovia camp function in accordance with the law," she wrote. "I demand that we be treated like human beings, not slaves."
In her letter, Tolokonnikova spoke of life at Penal Colony No. 14 in the Mordovian village of Parts - a jail that, according to local lore, is one of the harshest work camps. She claimed inmates are forced to work 17 hour days, from 7:30 a.m. to 12:30 a.m. sewing police uniforms - quotas are set that lock these work hours into place, and those that cannot keep up are often punished both verbally and physically.
"Your hands are pierced with needles and covered in scratches, your blood is all over the work table, but still you keep sewing," she wrote.
She also reported that dictator-like prison guards pit prisoner against prisoner to enforce rules in the jail; some prisoners are commissioned to distribute beatings and verbal reprimand to others.
She and other jailed women get four hours of sleep a night at best, living in rough encampments with faulty plumbing, rotten food and little opportunity to wash, she said.
"When the plumbing breaks down, urine splashes and clumps of feces fly out of the hygiene rooms," she wrote in her letter. "We get to do laundry once a week. The laundry room is a small room with three faucets pouring weak streams of cold water.
According to Tolokonnikova, prisoners subsist upon stale bread, watered down milk, and starches that have gone bad.
"This summer, they brought in sacks of slimy, black potatoes in bulk. Then they fed them to us," she stated
Officials from Penal Colony No. 14 in Mordovia camp did not comment when approached by Reuters.
This isn't the first time a Pussy Riot member has gone on a hunger strike - Maria Aloykhina, who is also currently imprisoned, announced she would stop eating back in May, after being denied to right to attend her own parole hearing.
Read Tolokonnikova's full letter here.
