Jailed Pussy Riot hunger striker Nadezhda Tolokonnikova in hospital
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova wrote a letter claiming prisoners were treated like ‘slaves.’
Jailed Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, who went on hunger strike in protest over threats to her life and harsh labor conditions in prison, was hospitalized on Sunday.
Agence France-Presse reported Tolokonnikova was moved to a medical facility in the village of Barashevo in the Mordovia region, southeast of Moscow, where a doctor described her condition as “terrible.”
Tolokonnikova’s husband, Pyotr Verzilov, said he would seek a meeting with his wife.
The 23-year-old mother of a young daughter was put in an isolation cell last Tuesday, a day after she went on hunger strike.
She complained via a letter to her husband that she had been threatened by fellow inmates and prison wardens, and forced to work 17 hours a day in a sewing workshop.
Tolokonnikova is halfway through a two-year sentence for hooliganism after she and other Pussy Riot members performed an anti-President Vladimir Putin song inside a Moscow cathedral.
Fellow band member Maria Alyokhina is also serving a two-year sentence. A third member of the group was given a suspended sentence.