An activist famous for eccentric anti-government demonstrations has been detained at an art installation against torture in central Moscow.
Yekaterina Nenasheva was detained at a Labor Day parade in May 2018 as well as in June 2017, reportedly for refusing to remove a virtual-reality headset outside the Kremlin. Authorities held her in 2015 when she had allowed her hair to be shaved off on Red Square, after spending a month wandering Moscow in a prison uniform to protest the Russian penal system.
Last week, Nenasheva locked herself inside an animal cage wrapped in plastic film outside the Federal Security Service (FSB) building ahead of the opening day of her torture exhibit.
Nenasheva and her assistant Sasha (Alexandra) Starost’ were detained on Novy Arbat, OVD-Info, a rights group that monitors detentions, cited their acquaintance as saying on Monday.
They have been held overnight on charges of procedural violations in arranging and conducting a demonstration, OVD-Info reported.
Nenasheva wrote in June that she had been beaten and abused last summer during a trip to eastern Ukraine, where pro-Moscow rebels and government forces have been engaged in a military conflict since 2014.
“Putting fingers in your mouth, making you eat when you’re sick, pretending to urinate on a person when they’re in a bag — this torture sounds like a prank compared to the threat of running an electric current through the organs,” she wrote on Facebook.
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