The last two imprisoned members of a Russian punk band walked free Monday, criticizing the amnesty measure that released them as a publicity stunt.
Maria Alekhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova were granted amnesty last week in a move largely viewed as the Kremlin’s attempt to soothe criticism of Russia’s human rights record before the Sochi Games in February.
“I’m calling for a boycott of the Olympic Games,” Tolokonnikova said. “What is happening today — releasing people just a few months before their term expires — is a cosmetic measure.”
The amnesty — and President Vladimir Putin’s pardoning last week of onetime oil tycoon and political rival Mikhail Khodorkovsky — freed some of the most prominent people who were sentenced in politically tainted cases.
The timing gives them new freedom to launch criticism of Putin’s Russia amid intense attention from international news media.
Khodorkovsky on Sunday told a news conference that his release shouldn’t be seen as indicating that there aren’t other “political prisoners” in Russia.
Andrei Makarkin of the Moscow-based Center for Political Technologies think tank cautioned that the releases don’t foretell a change in the Kremlin’s hard line on criticism.
“If someone else challenges the government on issues that it considers important, it will show no clemency,” he said.
Another member of the band, Yekaterina Samutsevich, was previously released on a suspended sentence. All three were found guilty of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred and sentenced to two years in prison for a performance at Moscow’s main cathedral in 2012.
The band members said their protest was meant to highlight their concern about increasingly close ties between the state and the church.
Tolokonnikova walked out of prison Monday, smiling to reporters and flashing a V sign.
“How do you like our Siberian weather here?” said Tolokonnikova, wearing a down jacket but no hat or scarf. The temperature was 13 degrees below zero. Tolokonnikova said she and Alekhina will set up a human rights group to help prisoners.
Tolokonnikova said the way prisons are run reflects the way the country is governed.
“I saw this small totalitarian machine from the inside,” she said. “Russia functions the same way the prison colony does.”
Alekhina, who was released earlier on Monday from a prison outside Nizhny Novgorod, said she would have stayed behind bars to serve her term if she had been allowed.
“If I had a chance to turn it down, I would have done it, no doubt about that,” she told Dozhd TV. “This is not an amnesty. This is a hoax and a PR move.”
She said the amnesty bill covers less than 10 percent of the prison population and only a fraction of women with children. Women convicted of grave crimes, even if they have children, are not eligible for amnesty.
Alekhina said prison officials didn’t give her a chance to say goodbye to cellmates, but put her in a car and drove her to the train station in downtown Nizhny Novgorod. Before seeing her family and friends, she met with local rights activists and said she will work on defending human rights.
Days earlier, Putin pardoned Khodorkovsky, a former oil tycoon and once Russia’s richest man, who spent a decade in prison after challenging Putin’s power. Khodorkovsky flew to Germany after his release and said he will stay out of politics. He pledged, however, to fight for the release of political prisoners in Russia.
Also on Monday, the European Court of Human Rights said it will review a complaint filed by band members over their treatment while on trial in Moscow in 2012.
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