Tolokonnikova Hunger Strike Letter
Updated: 6:17pm UK, Monday 23 September 2013
Below is a translation of Nadezhda Tolokonnikova's letter, explaining why she is going on hunger strike.
On Monday, September 23 I am going on hunger strike. This is a final measure, but I am absolutely sure that this is the only possible solution for me in this situation.
The administration of the colony is refusing to hear me, however I am not going to step away from my demands, I am not going to sit and watch how people are falling down because of slave-like conditions.
I demand human rights to be respected and law to be complied with in Mordovian camp. I demand prisoners to be treated like human beings, not slaves.
...
Mordovia greeted me with the words of the deputy chief of the penal colony, Lieutenant Colonel Kupriyanov, who is de-facto ruling the Colony Number 14: "You should know, that when it comes to political views, I am a Stalinist."
Another chief Colonel Kulagin (they rule the colony in tandem), on the first day summoned me for a talk, he tried to persuade me to confess my guilt.
"A big misfortune happened to you, hasn't it? You were given two years in prison. Usually when something bad happens to a person, they usually change their mind. You need to confess your guilt in order to get paroled. If you do not confess, there will be no parole."
I immediately told him that I will not work longer than an eight-hour day, required by the labour code.
"Labour codex is one thing, but what is really important is to fulfil your quota. If you don't fulfil it - you work overtime. We broke tougher people than yourself!" answered Colonel Kulagin.
My brigade works 16-17 hours per day. Starting from 7.30 am and finishing at 12.30 am. We don't get more than four hours of sleep. We get one day off in six weeks. Almost all Sundays are working days.
Prisoners are forced into writing petitions to work "out of their own desire" ... No one dares not to obey and not to work on Sunday until 1am.
One 50-year old woman asked to go to work until 8pm not 12.30am on Sunday in order to go to bed at 10pm and have eight hours' sleep at least once a week. She wasn't feeling well, suffering from high blood pressure.
In response, there was gathered a unit meeting where this woman was publicly insulted, humiliated and named lazy.
"Do you need more sleep than everyone else? You need to learn to pull your weight, you horse!"
When someone in the brigade can't work on doctor's orders, they get bullied as well.
"I worked when I had a fever of 40C and it was fine. What are you thinking - who is going to pick up the slack for you?"
My unit met me with the words of one prisoner, who was finishing her nine-year term: "Cops are scared to get to you. They want to do it using other inmates."
This explains the regime in the colony, they oppress you, intimidate and turn you into a wordless slave with the hands of other inmates who hold posts of heads of brigades and heads of units - all on the orders of the administration.
In order to maintain the discipline and obedience there is a wide range of informal punishment:
A ban from entering the barracks no matter the season. There is a woman in the second unit, where most of the disabled or pensioners are placed, who was banned from entering the barracks one day.
As a result of this, her feet and hands were frostbitten so severely they had to amputate one leg and fingers on her hand.
A ban on hygiene - you are banned from cleaning yourself and going to the toilet. A ban on eating your own food or beverages.
It's scary and even funny when a 40-year old woman says: "Today we are punished, will we be punished again tomorrow, I wonder?" She can't leave the sewing workshop for a pee or can't take a candy from her own bag. It's forbidden.
Dreaming only of some sleep and a sip of tea - tortured, nervous and dirty -, inmates become an obedient human material in the hands of the administration, who only perceive us as free slave labour.
Thus in June my salary was 29 (!) roubles (59p) for the whole month. Despite the fact that brigade sews 150 police uniforms per day. Where does the money they get for them go?
…
The quotas are constantly rising unpredictably and drastically.
"If you show the administration that you can make 100 uniforms per day, they will increase quota up to 120!" say experienced inmates.
And you can't not fulfil your quota, otherwise the whole unit or brigade will be punished. For instance, by standing in the quad for many hours without permission to use the bathroom or have a sip of water.
Two weeks ago our production quota has been increased from 100 uniforms a day to 150 uniforms.
"If you weren't Tolokonnikova, you would have had the shit kicked out of you a long time ago," say fellow prisoners with close ties to the administration.
It's true, others are beaten up for not being able to keep up.
They are being hit in the kidneys, face. All beatings are done by other inmates and not a single one of these beatings are done without approval from the administration.
A year ago, before I came here, a gypsy woman has been beaten to death in the third unit (the third is the pressure unit where they put prisoners that need to undergo daily beatings).
She died in the medical ward of Colony Number 14. The administration managed to conceal that she died from beatings; they put a stroke as an official reason of death.
In another unit new inmates who couldn't keep up, were forced to sew naked.
No one dares to complain to the administration because the administration will smile in response and let you go back to your unit, where the "snitch" will be beaten up on the orders of the administration.
For the colony administration, controlled hazing is a convenient method for forcing prisoners into total submission to their systemic abuse of human rights.
A threatening, anxious atmosphere pervades the work zone.
Eternally sleep-deprived, overwhelmed by the endless race to fulfil inhumanly large quotas, prisoners are always on the verge of breaking down, screaming at each other, fighting over the smallest things.
Just recently, a young woman got stabbed in the head with a pair of scissors because she didn't turn in a pair of pants on time. Another tried to cut her own stomach open with a hacksaw. They stopped her.
The hygienic conditions of the colony are aimed at making the inmate feel like a dirty animal with no rights.
Although dormitories have their own "hygiene rooms" we are only allowed to use the "common hygiene room" with a corrective and punitive purpose.
"Common hygiene room" has a capacity of five, where all 800 inmates come to wash themselves.
We are not supposed to use the "hygiene rooms" in our barracks, which would be too easy. "Common hygiene room" is always overcrowded and everyone is trying to wash themselves sitting on each other's head.
You are allowed to wash your hair once a week. However, this rare opportunity is sometimes cancelled.
A pump will break or the plumbing will be stopped up. At times, my unit was unable to bathe for two to three weeks.
When the plumbing breaks down, urine splashes and clumps of faeces fly out of the hygiene rooms.
We've learned to unclog the pipes ourselves, but our successes are short-lived - they soon get stopped up again. The colony does not have a snake for cleaning out the pipes.
We get to do laundry once a week. The laundry is a small room with three taps pouring weak streams of cold water.
It must also be a corrective measure to only give prisoners stale bread, heavily watered-down milk, exclusively rusted millet and rotten potatoes. This summer, they brought in sacks of slimy, black potatoes in bulk. Then they fed them to us.
…
The living and working condition violations at PC-14 are endless.
However, my main and most important grievance is bigger than any one of these. It is that the colony administration prevents any complaints or claims regarding conditions at PC-14 from leaving colony walls by the harshest means available.
The administration forces people to remain silent. It does not scorn stooping to the very lowest and cruellest means to this end.
…
The administration, petty and vengeful, will meanwhile use all of its mechanisms for putting pressure on the prisoner so she will see that her complaints will not help anyone, but only make thing worse.
They use collective punishment: you complain there's no hot water, and they turn it off entirely.
…
I was addressing the administration with an offer to resolve this conflict; to release me from the artificially inserted pressure enacted by the prisoners they control; to abolish the slave labour; to shorten the working day and decrease the quotas so that they correspond with the law.
In response, the pressure has only increased.
That is why I am going on the hunger strike on September 23.
I refuse to participate in the slave labour in the colony until the administration starts acting within the law and stops treating women like cattle ejected from the realm of justice for the purpose of stoking the production of the sewing industry; until they start treating us like humans.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova
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