Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

Keeping the pressure on Putin – Moscow is turning into a bully again

New York Daily News

Alex Goldfarb had an idea.

The veteran Russian dissident and longtime New York resident was standing in Union Square when it came to him.

He was there a week ago for an anti-Kremlin rally to protest Russia’s new law banning American adoptions of Russian orphans. It’s an especially vindictive measure that is solely intended to serve as political revenge for recent U.S. legislation that blacklists human rights-abusing Russian officials. Goldfarb, however, was thinking beyond a day’s worth of street theater.

“We should start a campaign to get Mayor Bloomberg to name a street in New York after Pussy Riot,” he said, referring to the feminist punk band made world famous after three of its members were arrested and subjected to a ridiculous show trial for performing a “punk prayer” denouncing Russian President Vladimir Putin in a Moscow cathedral.

Two of the members of Pussy Riot, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, are serving out their two-year sentences in a labor camp. One of the women, Yekaterina Samutsevich, was released in October.
In many ways, that trio has become the face of the protests against Putin’s ineradicable grip on the Kremlin. The three young women turned into an unlikely cause célèbre, with the likes of Madonna and Paul McCartney showing their support.