Pussy Riot Off To The Gulag

The two Pussy Riot members who remain jailed are being sent to remote Russian prison camps to complete their sentences, signaling that the Kremlin has not gone soft on dissent despite recently releasing the other woman.

Maria Alyokhina is being sent to Siberia, according to The Guardian, where she will serve out her two-year sentence in a women’s prison camp in Perm, a region notorious for some of the Soviet Union’s harshest prison camps.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova has been sent to Mordovia, thousands of miles from Moscow on Russia’s east European plain.

“These are the harshest camps of all the possible choices,” the band said via its Twitter account Oct. 22.

Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova had petitioned to serve their sentences in Moscow, where they could be closer to their children. The women each have a child, ages 5 and 4.

The women’s relatives and lawyers have not been told exactly where they are going. Perm and Mordovia host several prison camps, some of which comprised the Soviet-era gulag system. The prison authorities have declined to comment on the women’s whereabouts.

Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova were convicted of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred for performing an anti-Putin “punk anthem” in a Moscow cathedral in February. They argued that their conviction was part of a growing crackdown on free speech and political activism in Russia.

Yekaterina Samutsevich, a third member of Pussy Riot, was recently released from prison after being given a suspended sentence.

Skeptics have argued that the release was designed to give the appearance of mercy from the authorities.