Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, the jailed Pussy Riot punk, expressed in a letter released on Saturday her fear for her life in the penal colony located in the Russian region of Mordovia, following the restart of her hunger strike.
“I confess — yes, I am afraid for my life. Because I don’t know what will happen to me tonight. What the butchers of the Mordovia prison service will decide to do to me,” she wrote in a letter shared with the media by her former defense lawyer, Violetta Volkova.
The most recent handwritten letter, scans of which were published by the New Times opposition magazine, is dated Friday.
Volkova noted on her blog that she had visited Tolokonnikova on Friday morning while she was on hunger strike, describing her condition as seriously ill.
“It’s not merely that she is unable to hunger strike; she is effectively harming herself,” she commented.
“If you encountered Nadya on the street today, you would likely not recognize her.”
Tolokonnikova is currently serving a two-year sentence in central Russia for her punk protest group’s performance in a Moscow church that criticized President Vladimir Putin.
Last month, the 23-year-old initiated a hunger strike calling for a transfer to a different colony. She had released a letter detailing her 17-hour workdays in a sewing workshop and a veiled death threat from the deputy prison governor.
After eight days, she was hospitalized and placed on a drip.
She restarted her hunger strike on Friday upon returning to her penal colony Number 14, which is situated in a region filled with former Gulag camps.
On Friday afternoon, the prison service announced plans to transfer Tolokonnikova to a different colony.
Her husband, Pyotr Verzilov, tweeted on Saturday that Tolokonnikova was still on hunger strike and would persist “until the prison service’s decision to move her is fulfilled.”
Tolokonnikova and fellow Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina are scheduled to be released in March next year, both having young children. Each has had two requests for parole denied.
Verzilov accused lawyer Volkova of visiting Tolokonnikova with the intention of persuading her to soften her demands and make compromises with the prison authorities.
He also sent a letter, signed by Tolokonnikova and dated Friday, formally rejecting Volkova’s services and expressing suspicion about her “personal links to the prison administration.”