Pussy Riot musician on hunger strike to protest prison conditions
I know people here consider human rights essential for a just society and I regard these women as courageous free speech and feminist advocates. This is a terrible development and one would hope the tyrant Putin would show mercy but he is not merciful.
MOSCOW — A member of the punk rock group Pussy Riot went on a hunger strike Monday to protest what she said were unbearable conditions at a Russian prison camp.
“I demand that human rights be observed in the [prison] colony; I demand that this camp … abide by the law,” Nadezhda Tolokonnikova wrote in an open letter distributed by her husband. “I demand that we be treated as humans and not as slaves.”
In late 2012, Tolokonnikova, 24, and two other members of Pussy Riot, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich, were each sentenced to two years of imprisonment for inciting religious hatred.
The three were arrested in February of that year after they staged what they called a “punk prayer” against Russian President Vladimir Putin at Christ the Savior Cathedral in central Moscow. The incident occurred at the height of the 2012 presidential campaign, which Putin went on to win.