Freed Pussy Riot members say prison was time of 'endless humiliations'
After nearly two years in prison for singing a song about Vladimir Putin in Moscow's main cathedral, the women of Pussy Riot are no less defiant. Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova have walked free from prison , and pledged to devote their energies to changing the political system in Russia and improving conditions inside its prisons.
Bareheaded despite the -25C cold, Tolokonnikova walked out of prison in the eastern city of Krasnoyarsk, flashing a victory sign to reporters waiting outside. "How do you like our Siberian weather here?" she asked, before shouting "Russia without Putin!"
Speaking to the Guardian by telephone shortly after her release from prison in the city of Nizhny Novgorod, Alyokhina said that the pair – who were released as part of a wide-ranging amnesty announced last week – now plan to launch a project which will fight for the rights of inmates in the Russian prison system.
"We will be creating very special, colourful and powerful programmes to defend other innocent women in Russian prisons, who are being turned into slaves right now," Alyokhina said, adding that she planned to fly to Siberia in order to meet up with her band mate.
Tolokonnikova confirmed that the two women planned to meet soon to discuss the new project: "Russia is built along the same lines as a prison camp at the moment, so it's important to change the prison camps so that we can start to change Russia," she said. "Everything is just starting, so fasten your seat belts."
Alyokhina described her prison sentence as a time of "endless humiliations", including forced gynaecological examinations almost every day for three weeks.
She said: "I decided to become a human rights activist when I realised how easy it was for officials to make a decision and force women to be examined in the most intimate parts of their bodies. Russian officials should not stay unpunished, they cannot have this kind of absolute power over us."
Zoya Svetova, a member of the Moscow Public Oversight Commission visited Alyokhina in Moscow jail and confirmed that she had repeatedly been subjected to intimate searches.
"Inmates call it 'to be let through the chair' – it is a part of searching process. That is the most humiliating thing for any woman. I am not sure how many times Alyokhina went through it - I guess every time she left the jail to go to court," Svetova said... read more:
