MOSCOW
(AP) -- It's a far cry from Stalin's gulag, but the guiding principle
of the Russian penal colony -- the destination of two members of punk
band Pussy Riot -- remains the same: isolate inmates and wear them down
through "corrective labor."
Maria Alekhina and Nadezhda
Tolokonnikova will have to quickly learn the inner laws of prison life,
survive the dire food and medical care, and risk bullying from inmates
either offended by their "punk prayer" against President Vladimir Putin
or under orders to pressure them.
"Everyone knows the rule: Trust
no one, never fear and never forgive," said Svetlana Bakhmina, a lawyer
who spent three years in a penal colony. "You are in no-man's land.
Nobody will help you. You have to think about everything you say and do
to remain a person."
Alekhina, 24, Tolokonnikova, 22, and
Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, were convicted of hooliganism motivated by
religious hatred for an impromptu performance in Moscow's main cathedral
as Putin headed into an election that handed him a third term as
Russia's president. The women insisted their protest was political. But
many believers said they were deeply offended by the sight of the band
members dancing on the altar in balaclavas.
An appeals court
released Samutsevich on Wednesday, but upheld the two-year prison terms
of the others. The presiding judge said that "their correction is
possible only in isolation from society."
In colonies for women, inmates
live in barracks with
30 to 40 to a room. They begin the day by shuffling outside for
compulsory exercises at daybreak, in temperatures as low as minus 30
degrees Celsius in winter. After roll call and a breakfast of gruel,
they spend seven to eight hours a day at work, usually hunched over
sewing machines working on uniforms and other clothing.
Since
there is only one women's penal colony near Moscow, female prisoners
from the capital are commonly sent to Mordovia, a swampy,
mosquito-infested province on the Volga River. Defense lawyers said
Alekhina and Tolokonnikova would be transported to a penal colony within
two weeks, after receiving copies of their sentences. The location was
not yet known.
Despite the harsh conditions, many prisoners
nonetheless prefer the colonies to the pre-trial detention centers,
where they are kept in cramped, sometimes spectacularly unhygienic cells
and only allowed out for an hour a day. The three Pussy Riot members
were held in such a center since their February arrest.
Russian
inmates are kept in a system that Russia's own justice minister has
described as "monstrously archaic" and whose purpose has changed little
for hundreds of years. Czarist Russia sent prisoners to remote Siberian
colonies where labor was in short supply; the system was inherited and
expanded by the Soviet Union, which worked millions of prisoners to
death in the gulag. Russia incarcerates more people than any country in
the world bar the United States and China, according to the
International Centre for Prison Studies.
There have been other high-profile penal colony inmates in Putin's Russia.
Mikhail
Khodorkovsky, the imprisoned head of the Yukos oil company, served part
of his 14-year sentence in an Eastern Siberian colony. Once Russia's
richest man, he served his time making mittens. Arrested in 2003,
Khodorkovsky was convicted in two cases seen as punishment for
challenging Putin's power.
Bakhmina, who once worked for
Khodorkovsky, said you have little free time to yourself in the prison
colony, where guards often compel prisoners to attend classes or
participate in cultural activities. In a U.S. diplomatic cable released
by WikiLeaks in 2010, former Ambassador William Burns recalled visiting a
women's prison where inmates put on a "bizarre fashion and talent show"
for American officials.
"Boredom doesn't exist in the colony.
It's too good a concept for it. You just regret the time you spend,"
Bakhmina said. "A normal person can't even imagine that environment --
you have to get used to it and people have to get used to you. It takes
several months, maybe half a year. It's all about how you behave -- you
have to not be conceited and respect other people."
Prisoners are
typically paid the equivalent of about $10 a day, which they can use to
buy food, cigarettes, and toiletries. Those whose families don't send
them supplies scrape through on the unofficial labor market, cleaning up
the facilities or doing work for wealthier inmates. Cigarette packs are
the colony's internal currency.
Alekhina and Tolokonnikova, both
university graduates, are unlikely to have much in common with their
fellow inmates. "I didn't think there even were people like 90 percent
of the people I met," Bakhmina recalled. "I never had any idea there
were so many drug addicts, or so many people with speech impediments."
Spouses
are allowed three-day conjugal visits four times a year. Prisoners who
show especially good behavior can even be given two weeks' leave outside
the camp. Bakhmina became pregnant while serving her term and was
released several months after giving birth to a daughter. She saw her
two older sons only twice during her three years in the penal colony,
afraid it would be too traumatic for them to see their mother
imprisoned.
Mothers with children under the age of 3 can keep
them in centers on penal colony grounds, or in the case of one colony in
Mordovia in their barracks. Alekhina's 5-year-old son and
Tolokonnikova's 4-year-old daughter will live with relatives.
The
two punk band members can be punished with up to 15 days in solitary
confinement for minor infractions such as failing to make their beds or
to put their hands behind their backs at roll call or to greet guards
quickly enough.
Perhaps the greatest danger for the band members,
however, will be posed by their fellow inmates. Physical violence,
while a danger, is relatively rare in comparison to men's colonies. But
the psychological pressure can be greater, said Vitaly Borshchyov, head
of the Public Monitoring Commission, a human rights organization that
works with the government to improve prison conditions.
"Colonies
are all-consuming for women," he said. "Having a large group of women
together in a single space is a recipe for tension and conflicts. You
might get beaten up, sexually humiliated or forced to be someone's
lover, especially if you're a young woman."
The Pussy Riot
members' lawyers and supporters also fear that Orthodox believers may
attack them, either inspired by the extremely negative coverage of their
protest on state television or egged on by state officials.
"When
things get worse on the outside, it gets transferred into the
colonies," said Lev Ponomarev, a Soviet dissident who runs the Defending
Prisoners' Rights foundation. "Scoundrels think they can get away with
more. The authorities are totally indifferent."
The band members have vowed to remain defiant.
"We
will not be silent," Alekhina told the appeals court Wednesday. "And
even if we are in Mordovia or Siberia we will not be silent ... however
zealously you try to smear us."
Source : http://www.mercurynews.com/cupertino/ci_21771323/pussy-riot-members-face-tough-life-russian-penal
