Jailed Pussy Riot Member in Hospital on Seventh Day of Hunger Strike

A jailed member of the Russian punk group Pussy Riot was hospitalized Tuesday on the seventh day of a hunger strike to protest what she calls a persecution campaign against her.

Maria Alekhina was transferred to a hospital in her prison colony in the Ural Mountains town of Berezniki. Alekhina went on a hunger strike last Wednesday after she was barred from attending her own parole hearing. The court, which is across the street from the colony, denied her release.

Three members of the band — Alekhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Yekaterina Samutsevich — were convicted last year of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” for an impromptu punk protest against Vladimir Putin in Moscow’s main cathedral and given two-year sentences.

Reason.com

The closing statements from Maria Alyokhina in trial 8 august 2012, Khamovnichesky Courthouse, Moscow

Please turn subtitles on.

Abuse of prison regulations against imprisoned human rights defender in Belarus

On 16 May 2013, the wife of Belarus human rights defender Mr Ales Bialiatski went to the Bobruysk colony No.2, where her husband has been held since February 2012, in order to bring him a food parcel. However, the food parcel was refused by prison officials, who informed her that in March 2013 Ales Bialiatski's right to receive food from visitors had been suspended for six months.

Ales Bialiatski is the Chairman of Human Rights Centre Viasna. On 24 November 2011, he was found guilty of tax evasion on a large scale by the Pervomayski District Court of Minsk following an unfair trial, and was condemned to four and a half years imprisonment as well as the confiscation of all property including belongings registered in the name of other persons. The court also fined the human rights defender 721 million Belarusian Rubles (approx 82,700 USD) for alleged unpaid taxes and 36 million Belarusian Rubles (approx 4,100 USD) for state costs.

This incident is not the fist time that disciplinary measures have been used against Ales Bialiatski. Between March and June 2012, he received three reprimands, one of which resulted in the loss of visitation rights. Following the three reprimands, in June 2012 the human rights defender was named a 'malicious disturber', which resulted in his exclusion from the 2012 amnesty for economic crimes.

More on Front Line and on Viasna

Is the Russia Prison System Working Pussy Riot Member to Death?

An incarcerated member of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot has been hospitalized for illnesses related to prison work , reports the Associated Press . Nadezhda Tolokonnikova has reportedly been suffering severe headaches since last spring, when the 23-year-old began serving her two-year sentence on hooliganism charges.

Fellow band member Yekaterina Samutsevich, who was released on appeal in October, told the independent Russian news service Rain TV, "They don't allow [Tolokonnikova] to have any rest; she works nearly round the clock … She said she feels tired, extremely tired.”

Tolokonnikova’s conditions offer a window into Russia’s brutal modern prison system, which have been described as “ Gulag lite ,” referring to the notorious labor camps of the Soviet Union under Stalin.

More on Alternet

Obama to restart Guantanamo military commissions

US President Barack Obama is lifting the two-year freeze on new military trials for detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison. Mr Obama also announced a new process for continuing to hold those detainees not charged or convicted but deemed too dangerous to free.

He said the measures would "broaden our ability to bring terrorists to justice". Mr Obama had pledged in January 2009 to close the prison within a year.

"The American system of justice is a key part of our arsenal in the war against al-Qaeda and its affiliates," Mr Obama said in a statement.

Full article on BBC News

Drawings from the Gulag

Drawings from the Gulag consists of 130 drawings by Danzig Baldaev (author of the acclaimed Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia series), describing the history, horror and peculiarities of the Gulag system from its inception in 1918. Baldaev's father, a respected ethnographer, taught him techniques to record the tattoos of criminals in St. Petersburg's notorious Kresty prison, where Danzig worked as a guard. He was reported to the K.G.B. who unexpectedly offered support for his work, allowing him the opportunity to travel across the former U.S.S.R. Witnessing scenes of everyday life in the Gulag, he chronicled this previously closed world from both sides of the wire. With every vignette, Baldaev brings the characters he depicts to vivid life: from the lowest "zek" (inmate) to the most violent tattooed "vor" (thief), all the practices and inhabitants of the Gulag system are depicted here in incredible and often shocking detail. In documenting the attitude of the authorities to those imprisoned, and the transformation of these citizens into survivors or victims of the Gulag system, this graphic novel vividly depicts methods of torture and mass murder undertaken by the administration, as well as the atrocities committed by criminals upon their fellow inmates.

Artbook

More images on itsdeadlicious.com and more about gulags on the very interesting gulaghistory.org