According to her lawyer and a fellow member of Pussy Riot, band member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova — who has been serving a two-year prison camp sentence since October of last year — has been hospitalized since January 24 due to persistent headaches that have worsened since her imprisonment and overwork, the AP reports. Irina Khrunova, Tolokonnikova’s lawyer, sent a request for a full medical checkup to prison authorities in December.
“They don’t allow her to have any rest; she works nearly round the clock,” fellow band member Yekaterina Samutsevich — who was released from prison camp on appeal — said in a TV interview today. “She said she feels tired, extremely tired.”
Tolokonnikova’s job in the prison camp is to operate a sewing machine, and in an interview with Russia’s Novaya Gazeta newspaper she said her fingers have been punctured by the needle, but she is now able to meet her quota to sew the lining of 320 jackets every day.
“Obviously, the conditions aren’t that great,” Tolokonnikova’s husband Pyotr Verzilov told the AP, “but her lawyer’s dealing with it.”
— Benjamin Sutton
Tags: Benjamin Sutton, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, News, Pussy Riot
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I support in my heart anyone, artist or not, but artist especially, who fight for free speech. Obviously with a name like Pussy Riot they were throwing themselves into a fight. It wasn’t about unruly kitty cats now was it.
I say that if your writing doesn’t get you in trouble, you probably aren’t very good.
I am sad to hear of Yekaterina’s imprisonment and suffering.
A Russian friend said the situation in Russia is worth than before the fall of communism. Capitalism really does ruin nations.
I’m sorry Nadezhda is in prison. But after everything that PR had done in Russia (and remember, this is a woman who was photographed and documented having sex in a orgy while pregnant in a public museum – as a ‘protest’ – amongst many other well documented ‘protests’) – if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.