Picketers were to protest in support of hunger-striking Pussy Riot activist Nadezhda Tolokonnikova outside the building of the Federal Prisons Service in Moscow on Wednesday.
Organizer Dmitry Kuminov told Ekho Moskvy radio that the picket was sparked by Tolokonnikova 's open letter, published widely Monday, in which the activist announced she was going on a hunger strike and chronicled inhuman conditions at the penal colony in Mordovia where she is serving her sentence.Tolokonnikova claimed to have received death threats from the deputy head of the prison and said that her hunger strike was "the single possible way out" of her predicament.
Following the letter's publication, Tolokonnikova was moved Monday to what prison officials have called a safety cell, even though in a separate letter to Lenta.ru the activist said she had been put in solitary confinement as a punishment for broadcasting her condition.The picket will run from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. near the Oktyabrskaya metro station, according to the event's Facebook page. The organizers were inviting everyone who "is not indifferent to what is happening with Nadya and what is going on in Russian prisons" to participate.
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