The Gulags of Soviet Russia are famous as being the largest system of slave labour in modern history. In its height, over a million prisoners toiled across the vastness of Siberia, and countless thousands died or malnutrition, torture, and hard work. In many ways, it was worse than Nazi Germany.

But that was the past, no? We have learned our lesson, and the Soviet system has collapsed. But slave labor, apparently remains with us, leading one brave Russian prisoner - in jail only for speaking out against corruption - to go on a hunger strike.

“Beginning September 23, I am going on hunger strike and refusing to participate in colony slave labour,” Tolokonnikova wrote in a letter circulated by her husband Pyotr Verzilov. “I will do this until the administration starts obeying the law and stops treating incarcerated women like cattle,” she wrote. Tolokonnikova is in Corrective Colony No. 14 in the Mordovia region, southeast of Moscow. She said inmates at the colony were forced to work up to 17 hours a day sewing police uniforms…workers received no more than four hours sleep a night and prison officials used senior inmates to enforce order.

Russia is turning incredibly authoritarian under Vladimir Putin - criminalizing homosexuality and arresting protestors calling for free speech. Protesters like the Pussy Riots, who were using music to highlight the injustices of the Putin regime, are now public enemies in new Russia.

Next year, Russia is welcoming in the world to the Sochi Winter

Olympics. This is the time to put pressure on the country to change its policies. These instances of modern day slavery in Russia’s prisons must be investigated now.

22,000 have already heeded the call for a United Nations led investigation of Russia’s prisons and the allegation of torture and slavery. Join them.