A member of Russian punk band Pussy Riot released from jail under an amnesty has called for foreign countries to boycott the Winter Olympics being held in Russia early next year.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova dismissed the amnesty law that set her free, saying releasing people just a few months before their term expires was a "cosmetic measure".
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova called for a boycott of the Winter Olympics. Photo: AFP / TVK6
Calling for a boycott of the Sochi Games in February, the 24-year-old said Western governments should not give in because of oil and gas deliveries from Russia.
She labelled the Russian state a "totalitarian machine" and said prison reform was the starting point for reform of Russian society.
Ms Tolokonnikova was released from a Siberian prison on Monday hours after bandmate Maria Alyokhina, 25, was freed from jail in the city of Nizhny Novgorod. Ms Alyokhina told Russian TV that the amnesty was "a profanation".
Rights groups have already campaigned for a boycott of the Sochi Games after Russia passed a law forbidding "propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among minors".
The band members were jailed in 2012 after singing a protest song in a Moscow cathedral, an act seen as blasphemous by many Russians, and condemned by the Orthodox Church.
The two Pussy Riot members were due to be freed in March. They were freed early because they both have children, and the amnesty law covered mothers. A third Pussy Riot protester, Yekaterina Samutsevich, was also jailed, but was released on appeal in October 2012.
Charges against 30 people arrested while taking part in a Greenpeace protest at a Russian Arctic offshore oil rig - including two New Zealanders - may also be dropped later this week under the amnesty law.
Former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, was freed last week under the amnesty.
