Pussy Riot Founders Set Up Prisoners' Rights Center

[uhnope]

Source: RFE/RL

Two founding members of the female punk performance-art group Pussy Riot have officially announced their newly established center to defend prisoners' rights.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina told reporters on March 13 that the center will work from within a complex of penal colonies in Russia's Republic of Mordovia.

The center -- called Zona Prava (Zone of Law) -- also has a hotline number that offers legal advice to those who have suffered prison abuse or for their relatives.

The women were convicted of hooliganism for a performance critical of President Vladimir Putin in a Moscow cathedral in 2012.

Read more: http://www.rferl.org/content/russia-pussy-riot-prisoners-center/25295716.html

[William769]

1. Those women are great!

No doubt about it.

[uhnope]

2. they had a harrowing time in the gulag

[happyslug]

6. They did? Prisons are not nice, but these women did not go to a "Gulag".

The Gulags were NOT nice places, but disappeared in the 1950s:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag#Conditions

On the other hand the prison Pussy Riot members were sent to, while harsh, not a gulag:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-20035343

All you've got inside are rows of bunkbeds, a night stand and a stool.

There is also a toilet but you cannot use it as there is no central sewage system. We used to go outside to the so-called 'hole', sometimes when it was -20C in the winter.

Sounds like my barracks during boot camp. We had to go outside to use the latrine and my barrack was one large wooden building with bulk beds but we never had a night stand or stool. Thus these women had MORE then I had when I was in Boot Camp in the 1980s.

As to punishment, sounds like a US Prison:

There was no torture in FGU IK-14, but anyone disobeying the prison rules would be punished by getting sent to "shiza" [Russian abbreviation for schizophrenia] - a solitary cell.

[Feral Child]

3. K&R n/t

[Jefferson23]

4. Recommend. n/t

[sheshe2]

5. DU Rec!