Freed on Monday in a Kremlin-backed amnesty, Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova criticized Russia's prison system and said the whole country is built like a penal colony, Agence France-Presse reported.
"Russia is built on the model of a penal colony and that is why it is so important to change the penal colonies today to change Russia," Tolokonnikova told journalists after her release. "Penal colonies and prisons are the face of the country."
Released bandmate Maria Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova will take up a project that focuses on the rights of prisoners, she said. The experience of spending a year and 10 months in prison will be used as the subject of the project, AFP reported.
"I don't consider this time wasted," she said. "I gained unique experience which will make it easier to really engage in human rights work. I became older, I saw the state from within, I saw this totalitarian machine as it is."
She was arrested for performing a "punk prayer" in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior while protesting Vladimir Putin's re-election campaign. She told journalists her views haven't changed since then, AFP reported.
"Prisoners should be treated like normal human beings ... not like trash," she said, specifically mentioning her previous penal colony in Mordovia in central Russia, where "people were being murdered morally and physically."
According to AFP, Tolokonnikova spent the majority of her sentence in Mordovia, and in September exposed a litany of abuses in the colony in a public letter. Convicts were treated as slave labor, fed rotten food and refused basic facilities or medical care, she said. She was transferred to a different region after declaring a hunger strike.
Tolokonnikova said she plans to meet with Alyokhina as soon as possible.
"We have a plan to create a human rights organization that would help political prisoners," she said.
© 2025 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
