 Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina, members of the punk group Pussy Riot, have announced that a new human rights organisation called “Zona prava” [Law Zone] will be set up in Mordovia. They made the announcement on 13 March 2014 at a press conference in Saransk. According to Radio Svoboda, the project will involve the monitoring of human rights violations in the country’s penal institutions. The members of the punk group said that the organisation would work together with people released from custody and with the families of those still serving sentences. The pair also stated that they had not yet managed to register the human rights centre officially. On 17 August 2012, Moscow’s Khamovnichesky district court sentenced three Pussy Riot members – Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alekhina and Ekaterina Samutsevich – to two years in a standard regime penal colony after they were found guilty of hooliganism on grounds of religious hatred following their performance of the punk prayer “Virgin Mary, put Putin away” in Moscow’s Christ the Saviour cathedral. Samutsevich’s sentence was later commuted to a suspended sentence, while Tolokonnikova and Alekhina were released under the amnesty announced in December last year. Translated by Joanne Reynolds |
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