Missing Pussy Riot Member Was Sent to Penal Camp in Siberia

Jailed Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova — who is currently serving the last few months of her two-year sentence for her participation in an anti-Putin performance — is being sent to a prison colony in the depths of Siberia, according to her relatives and lawyers. Last week her family reported that they hadn’t had contact with her in 10 days, leading many to believe that she’d gone missing.

Tolokonnikova’s husband Petya Verzilov says that he’s received “100 percent reliable” information that indicates that Nadya is being moved to a prison in the Krasnoyarsk region, which is four times zones and 2,000 miles from Moscow. Verzilov believes that this comes as a result of her public statements against Russia, the most recent of which took the form of an open letter about the deplorable “slave labor-like” conditions in prison, which included 17-hour workdays, brutal beatings and humiliating punishments.

After Tolokonnikova first wrote about the prison conditions, she was placed on an “information blockade,” which was obviously meant to remove her from the media spotlight. Relocating her to one of the most remote regions on the planet will very effectively further this goal; isolating her from her family and lawyers also serves to punish Nadya for speaking out.

“They do not have the ability to put on the usual psychological or physical pressure they can use with inmates because of the high profile of the case,” Verzilov told the Guardian. “So they have chosen this as the punishment instead.”

“Pussy Riot’s Tolokonnikova ‘is being punished with move to Siberian prison'” [Guardian]
Image via AP.