Interfax: Pussy Riot’s Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina plan to support women held in Nizhny Novgorod prison

January 14, 2014 JRL Russia List Corruption, Law, Police, Courts, Crime, Politics, Government, Protests, Elections

File Photo of Pussy Riot Members in Courtroom Enclosure, With Man Showing Papers to One While Female Guard Looks On

(Interfax – January 14, 2014) Two performers of the feminist punk group Pussy Riot, Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, who were released from prison at the end of 2013 under an amnesty, are going to the city of Nizhny Novgorod, where they plan to meet inmates of Correctional Institution for Women No.2.

“Tomorrow [on January 14], Masha and I are going to Nizhny Novgorod to visit inmates being held at Correctional Institution for Women No.2. Thirty or so inmates have forwarded complaints to human rights campaigners over the labor conditions there. We are going there to support those who have been able to summon up the courage to confirm these already well known facts,” Tolokonnikova said on her Facebook page on Monday.

Some of the women serving their terms in this penitentiary “said that they had told the truth and had now found themselves in a ‘blockade’,” she said.

“We have been unable to get in touch with them for several weeks because they have been denied phone calls. Apart from that, information has reached us that these women have been put under pressure,” Tolokonnikova said.

On her Twitter page, Tolokonnikova said that she and Alyokhina would arrive in Nizhny Novgorod on Tuesday morning.

Nizhny Novgorod’s Correctional Institution for Women No. 2 in the penitentiary where Alyokhina had been put after she and Tolokonnikova had been sentenced to two years in prison each after performing an obscenity-laced “punk prayer” at the Cathedral of the Christ the Savior in Moscow. Both women were released on December 23, 2013 as part of Russia’s broad amnesty intended to mark the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the country’s constitution.

Upon their release, Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova pledged to campaign for the rights of prison inmates and announced their Law Zone project.

“I will continue to monitor the situation in the Nizhny Novgorod [penal] colony. The women who said their words about violations of their labor rights must be heard,” Alyokhina said in Nizhny Novgorod on December 23, before departing to Moscow.