‘In prison books become the air’: Pussy Riot joins campaign against prisoner book ban
A member of Pussy Riot and other cultural figures have urged Chris Grayling to end his ban on prisoners being sent books, as the campaign against the policy goes global.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova joined other novelists, poets and musicians who have been incarcerated in countries such as Cuba and Uzbekistan in backing the campaign by the Howard League for Penal Reform and English PEN.
"Because you have books, you know that every day you spend behind bars is not a day spent in vain," Tolokonnikova said.
The Pussy Riot member spent 21 months in jail after taking part in a concert protest against Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Belarusian journalist Iryna Khalip, who was detained for criticising the regime, wrote: "When you are free you don't have such a painful desire to read as you have in prison. You can get any book at home, in the shops or from the internet.
"In prison books become the air. Your body needs air to breathe. No books – you cannot breathe. And if you cannot breathe there is no life."
The intervention comes on World Book Night, a day when English PEN traditionally sends books to prisoners overseas. While the group is still allowed to do that in states known for their human rights abuses, they are unable to do so for British prisoners.
"I bear witness to the therapy that books give in moments of gloom," Nigerian journalist Kunle Ajibade said.
"Why would anyone who truly cares for humanity want to deny a prisoner a mind builder?"
Ajibade said Makurdi prison, where he stayed for three and a half years, "stank of rotten rotten flesh, of excrement, of rat urine", but the regime still allowed prisoners to be sent books.
Cameroonian poet Enoh Meyomesse described books in prison as a source of "moral support".
He added: "They have proven to me that, while my biological family has abandoned me, there exists another family – perhaps even more important – a family of literature, a family of novelists and poets like me, which is always beside me and will never abandon me."
Books were included in a ban on all parcels being sent to prisoners when Grayling changed prison rules last November.
The Ministry of Justice has remained unmoved by a concerted effort to get it to think again, despite the support of the Poet Laureate and leading authors.
Grayling insists contraband can be sent in with packages and that depriving inmates of parcel contents is part of his "Spartan" prison regime.
