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A jailed member of Russian punk band Pussy Riot was hospitalised yesterday after going on a hunger strike to protest prison conditions, her husband said, but her condition was not clear. |
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova was admitted to the hospital at the prison where she is serving a two-year term for a protest against President Vladimir Putin in Russia’s main Orthodox Christian cathedral, Pyotr Verzilov said.
Verzilov said the acting head of the prison had described Tolokonnikova’s condition as “horrible” but had given no further details. He also said prison officials would not show him documents about her transfer to hospital or allow her lawyers to visit.
The administration of the prison could not immediately be reached for comment, and prison service employees in the remote Mordovia region declined to comment.
Tolokonnikova, 23, announced on Monday that she was starting a hunger strike to protest against “slave labour” at Corrective Colony No. 14, where she is serving her sentence, and that she had received a death threat from a senior prison official.
She said inmates were forced to work up to 17 hours a day, deprived of sleep and subjected to collective punishment and violence from senior inmates enforcing order in a system reminiscent of the Soviet-era Gulag forced labour camps.
Prison authorities dismissed her accusations that the jail is run in violation of Russian law and human rights standards.
Tolokonnikova is due for release in March. Another jailed Putin critic, former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, praised her yesterday for speaking out about prison conditions and said she should not lose sight of her imminent freedom.
“I know that you’ve got family and friends waiting for you on the outside. You’ve done a great job, you’ve really stuck it out, and you’re continuing to stick it out,” Khodorkovsky wrote in a letter circulated yesterday.
“All I would ask is that you carefully weigh the costs and benefits of what you’re trying to achieve with the impact it will have on your health or even your life. I am confident that the intended effect of bringing attention to the problem has already been achieved.”
Tolokonnikova yesterday accused Russian prison officers of cutting off her drinking water on the fifth day of a hunger strike—a move the prison service denies.
In a message sent by her husband, activist Pyotr Verzilov, Tolokonnikova said that a prison guard told her he was ordered to take away all her drinking water, and then a prisoner who fulfils the functions of an attendant removed the bottles.
“He grabbed my arms and painfully squeezed my shoulders, stopping me from moving,” she said.
“At that moment, prisoner Nevecherya removed all my drinking water standing in the punishment cell in bottles.”
“Without water a person dies in a few days during a hunger strike,” she said.
The prison service denied her claim, saying on its website that it had replaced her cold drinking water with warm boiled water on medical advice.
In a growing standoff, Tolokonnikova said that video camera footage would prove the first use of force against her in the penal colony.