Pussy Riot Band Member Tolokonnikova Disappears After Prison Transfer
Pussy Riot band member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova has not been seen or heard from for 10 days, her husband says. Her location is being kept secret after being transferred from a prison in Mordovia. Tolokonnikova is one of three members of protest punk band Pussy Riot convicted last year. Their arrest followed a public performance a song critical of Vladimir Putin at a Russian Orthodox church.
Tolokonnikova and fellow band member are serving a two-year prison sentence for “hooliganism,” reports CNN. A third band member has been previously released after courts granted an appeal. Husband Petr Verzilov says his 23-year-old wife, Tolokonnikova, was transferred from the Mordovia labor camp on October 24 or 25.
She was supposed to arrive in Chelyabinsk, Russia, but her husband says that her status has not been told to him. Under Russian law, it is required that the prisoner’s family be notified of her transfer within 10 days, but this has not happened.
As BBC News reports, Tolokonnikova’s husband says the last confirmation he had of his wife’s whereabouts were on October 21. That day guards say they put the convicted Pussy Riot member on a train headed for another prison. However, a passenger on the train says they saw Tolokonnikova on October 24 after arriving in Chelyabinsk.
The imprisoned Pussy Riot band member’s husband says authorities in Moscow want to “cut her off from the outside world” by transferring her to a remote labor camp in the Ural mountains. Tolokonnikova has come to the fore of people’s attention around the world after claims of abuse and mistreatment in the Mordovia prison earlier this year.
Though only six months remained on Tolokonnikova’s sentence, she says the prison conditions were unbearable. To protest, she began a hunger strike in late September. Her husband says that she is very frail after weeks of refusing meals. He alleges that she’s been moved as punishment for her hunger striking and to try to limit outside scrutiny.
Many Russians found Pussy Riot’s performance blasphemous and supported the arrest and conviction of the band’s members, despite international objections.
[Image via Denis Bochkarev / Wikimedia Commons]
