Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Pussy Riot Member, Declares Hunger Strike

[dipsydoodle]

Source: Huffington

MOSCOW -- One of the imprisoned members of the Russian punk group Pussy Riot says she is beginning a hunger strike to protest harsh working conditions and threats to her life.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova is serving a two-year sentence for hooliganism. She and two other group members were arrested in 2012 when Pussy Riot made a brief, unauthorized performance in Moscow's main Orthodox cathedral denouncing Vladimir Putin.

In a letter published Monday on the group's blog, Tolokonnikova says inmates in her prison are forced to work up to 17 hours a day in a shop that makes police uniforms.

She also says the prison's deputy warden threatened her last month, saying "Things never will be bad for you because there is nothing bad in the next world."

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/23/nadezhda-tolokonnikova-hunger-strike-pussy-riot_n_3974985.html

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Original news here :

MOSCOW, September 23 (RIA Novosti/RAPSI) – Feminist punk group Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, currently serving a two-year jail sentence for a protest in a Russian cathedral, has gone on hunger strike over prison conditions and threats against her life allegedly made by prison staff, according to a letter published by Russian news website Lenta.ru.

“On September 23 I am going on hunger strike,” Tolokonnikova wrote in the letter given to Lenta.ru by her husband Pyotr Verzilov. “I refuse to take part in the camp’s slave labor until prison colony bosses start obeying the law and treating the convicted women like humans, rather than as cattle ejected from the legal world to operate sewing machines.”

In her letter, Tolokonnikova, 23, paints a grim picture of life in her prison colony in Russia’s republic of Mordovia, alleging inmates are forced to work 17-hour days, permitted to sleep for only four hours a night, deprived of toilet access, washing facilities and food, and suffer regular beatings sanctioned by the prison authorities.

Prison officials have unchecked authority within the prison camp, and prevent the prisoners from making any complaints through official channels by intimidation and confiscation, according to Tolokonnikova, Lenta.ru reported.

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20130923/183667968/Pussy-Riot-Member-Declares-Hunger-Strike-Slams-Prison-Conditions.html

[seabeyond]

1. another supposed feminist group, started by two men, using the women in degrading porn.

Now while I support without ambiguity the liberation of Pussy Riot’s members, it’s worth pausing for a minute to ask ourselves, as radical feminists, what the political dynamics are here. Why would Western media denounce so passionately the repression of feminists in Russia, when it usually only diffuses information that supports male supremacy and patriarchy? Feminism has long disappeared from any malestream media, except when journalists can turn it into male masturbation material, that is pornify either our suffering or our resistance to it. What’s going on here?

Before learning more about the case, the first thing that made me frown was the fact progressives were hailing Pussy Riot as the “new feminists”, despite that their name is fairly insulting to women. It is certainly not apolitical, since we are in a context in which pornography has deeply colonised our movement and the only groups that the media presents as feminist are those that either insult us or reclaim the very instruments of our subordination, that is, male sexual violence, PIV, pornified femininity and all the associated harmful cultural practices. These tactics of destroying the meaning of feminism form part of a general worldwide backlash against women.

I found it suspicious that Pussy Riot was getting so much media attention, even for pseudo feminist standards. You can measure the degree of feminism of an action by how men react to it, and if men collectively cheer and celebrate it, then you can be pretty sure there’s something wrong about it, or that it doesn’t somehow support our liberation from men. And as far as I can recall, even the slutwalks didn’t get as much coverage or public appraisal. What was it that men liked so much about Pussy Riot?

Well, under closer inspection I discovered that the high level of coverage was related to – though indirectly – promoting men’s right to women’s sexual subordination and the pornification of our movement. The arrested women actually form part (and are victims of) a mixed anarchist group called “Voina” (meaning “war”), founded in 2007 by two men called Oleg Vorotnikov and Leonid Nikolaïev, who regularly engage the women in extreme and degrading women-hating pornography as part of their public “political stunts”. Some of Voina’s men have actually already been incarcerated in 2011 for hooliganism – which is punished for 7 years of prison in Russia, but their bail was paid for by an artist named “Banksy” four months after their imprisonment. (More information can be found here and here)

http://radfemworldnews.wordpress.com/2012/08/20/pussy-riot-whose-freedom-whose-riot/

[dipsydoodle]

2. I had wondered about that.

I knew some of the background to Femen from a post of Ocpagu's in the Latin Forum some months ago.

[seabeyond]

3. anytime there are women being degraded in the name of women, look behind the scenes. nt

[grantcart]

5. yikes!

[Tumbulu]

7. What a nightmare!!!

I bookmarked this site, too. Thanks for posting this seabeyond, and thanks for coming back!

[AverageJoe90]

9. Having looked into it.....

While it may be true that "Voina" has had its own problems, I sadly must point out that quite a bit of this article definitely seems to be dedicated to downplaying the wrongdoings of Russian authorities towards these women, of which there are MANY, while focusing 99% of the attention on just one part of the problem. It doesn't help, either, that they end up being inconsistent in a few places, especially when they claim that they say that they really are against both.

I mean, come on, radfems! Make up your minds, will you? SMH.....

[Comrade Grumpy]

4. Putin needs to be shamed into releasing these women--if that's possible.

The looming Olympics should figure in any campaigns.

[roguevalley]

6. i hope she succeeds regardless of the background. putin is a fucker.

[dipsydoodle]

8. Hunger Striking Pussy Riot Member Moved to Separate Cell

Pussy Riot's Nadezhda Tolokonnikova has been given her own room after she wrote an open letter saying that she was going on a hunger strike to protest conditions at her penal colony in Mordavia.

She has been transferred to a safe, single room, Gennady Morozov, head of the local public supervising committee, told Interfax.

The Federal Prison Service added that the member of the feminist punk rock collective is now living in 7-square meter room with a bed, a refrigerator and her personal belongings.

On Monday a letter from Tolokonnikova, who is serving a two-year prison sentence after singing an anti-Putin song at Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral in 2012, spoke of harsh conditions at the colony and death threats from the prison's deputy head Yuri Kupriyanov.

Morozov said the colony's administration is investigating the inmate's complaint but stressed that the decision to place her in solitary confinement was made in reaction to her complaints on receiving threats from other inmates, not as a disciplinary measure against her.

Read more: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/hunger-striking-pussy-riot-member-moved-to-separate-cell/486536.html#ixzz2fnxMUWAO
The Moscow Times