Posts Tagged ‘Pussy riot’
Pussy Riot is just the start of the fight for free speech in Russia
Today’s guilty verdict in the Pussy Riot case has confirmed Vladimir Putin not as the sucessor to Stalin, but sucessor to the tsars. Putin is anointed little father, and the church-state monster against which Tolokonnikov, Alekhina and Semutsevich protested at Christ The Saviour Cathedral in March has bitten back.
When the three members of the art collective entered the cathedral in March, they cannot have imagined where it would end – Pussy Riot members told Index on Censorship that the arrests had been a surprise. Some of the group had previously staged anti-government actions in Moscow, and even been arrested, but nothing could have prepared them for this ordeal.
That is not to say that these are naive people. Pussy Riot is loosely affiliated to the avant-garde art group Voina (“War”), which has staged increasingly daring activities over the past few years. In 2010, the group audaciously managed to paint an enormous penis on St Petersburg’s Liteinyi Bridge. The action took exhaustive planning, but the result was brilliant, and hilarious: as the bridge was raised at night, the huge phallus pointed directly at the city’s FSB headquarters. That work, “Cock Held Captive By The FSB”, won an award for innovation in art. Two years later, Voina’s feminist counterpart has been condemned.
The female nature of the protest is at least part of the problem. Though their name itself is meaningless to most Russians, the dresses and tights and appeals to the Virgin Mary to become a feminist in their “punk prayer” are a very clear signal that this is about women. In a country whose leader takes every opportunity to exhibit his manly attributes – horseriding with no shirt on, judo, magically discovering ancient artefacts while out for a swim, subduing unruly polar bears – feminism in itself is a provocation – even un-Russian, as the prosecution in the trial claimed.
Read More →
Facebook
Twitter
Google Buzz
LinkedIn
del.icio.us
Google Bookmarks
Yahoo! Buzz
Tumblr
StumbleUpon
FriendFeed
NewsVine
Digg
Of Putin and Punks
Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin has become expert at using the power of the courts to break opponents and crush political dissent. In the latest episode, the three young women of the “Pussy Riot” punk band were sentenced Friday to two years in prison for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.”
The women were arrested in March for performing an anti-Putin stunt inside the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow, where they beseeched “Virgin Mary, drive away drive away Putin!” The clips went viral on YouTube, which is what really must have irked the Kremlin.
Following the method of Putin justice, the court barred much defense testimony, though it allowed prosecution witnesses who had not been at the cathedral. The judge on Friday took more than three hours to read the verdict, which included detailed descriptions of the shape of the defendants’ heads. According to the live-tweets of reporter Simon Shuster, the judge also noted their “mixed psychological disorders” that include “individualism, stubborn expression of opinions, unwillingness to cede positions.”
The proceedings were no less farcical than those that have kept oil tycoon and Putin opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky behind bars since 2003. And the trial follows the recent indictment of Alexei Navalny, an anti-corruption blogger and lawyer, on charges of embezzling money from a state company. Mr. Navalny faces between five and 10 years in prison, though the charges against him were investigated and dropped twice by regional prosecutors. He has become a Putin target because his writings are a focal point for the growing protests against the authoritarian regime.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
When Putin’s Thugs Came for Me
The only surprise to come out of Friday’s guilty verdict in the trial here of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot was how many people acted surprised. Three young women were sentenced to two years in prison for the prank of singing an anti-Putin “prayer” in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Their jailing was the next logical step for Vladimir Putin’s steady crackdown on “acts against the social order,” the Kremlin’s expansive term for any public display of resistance.
In the 100 days since Mr. Putin’s re-election as president, severe new laws against public protest have been passed and the homes of opposition leaders have been raided. These are not the actions of a regime prepared to grant leniency to anyone who offends Mr. Putin’s latest ally, the Orthodox Church and its patriarch.
Unfortunately, I was not there to hear the judge’s decision, which she took hours to read. The crowds outside the court building made entry nearly impossible, so I stood in a doorway and took questions from journalists. Suddenly, I was dragged away by a group of police—in fact carried away with one policeman on each arm and leg.
The men refused to tell me why I was being arrested and shoved me into a police van. When I got up to again ask why I had been detained, things turned violent. I was restrained, choked and struck several times by a group of officers before being driven to the police station with dozens of other protesters. After several hours I was released, but not before they told me I was being criminally investigated for assaulting a police officer who claimed I had bitten him.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
Putin’s Russia Is Becoming a Flawless Dictatorship
The window through which the world currently views Vladimir Putin’s Russia is narrow and can only be opened from the outside — like the feeding door of a cage.
The window is part of the glass enclosure in which the defendants are held during trials in Moscow’s Khamovniki district court. As long as it’s open, it serves as their connection to the outside world. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was Russia’s richest man until 2003 and has been its most famous prisoner since then, used it to deliver a couple of words to the world when he was put on trial here for a second time in 2010.
Last Wednesday, it was the voice of Nadezhda Tolokonnikova that was coming from the cage. Tolokonnikova, a 22-year-old student, together with two other members of the feminist punk bank Pussy Riot, were being charged with “hooliganism.” When the verdict is pronounced on Friday, the women could be sentenced to up to three years in prison.
The charge is documented in videos showing the musicians, wearing ski masks, giving a performance on Feb. 21, 2012, in front of the wall of icons in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow. The lyrics included the following: “Mother of God, Virgin Mary, drive Putin away,” “Holy shit, shit, Lord’s shit,” and “The patriarch believes in Putin / Bastard, better believe in God.”
In their closing statements to the court, the defendants tried to refute the charge of “hooliganism.” Tolokonnikova, with her neatly plucked eyebrows and perfectly styled hair, unabashedly referred to other people who went to extremes to defend their beliefs: St. Stephen, the first martyr of the Christian church; the writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who was sentenced to death for his resistance to religious and secular rulers alike; and Gulag chronicler Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, who predicted “that words will crush concrete.”
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
Fire fighting
Russia is on the verge of becoming a WTO member, but practitioners with in-depth, first-hand experience of the country’s legal, political and business infrastructure believe it is rotten to the core.
It is Russian Business Week 2010 and students in a crowded lecture hall at the London School of Economics (LSE) are on the edge of their seats as Roger Munnings, chairman of Russia’s Audit Committee Institute, stands up to deliver his keynote speech.
Before he begins he asks any Russian members of the audience to raise their hands: 200 hands shoot straight up. He then asks how many people wish to return to Russia to work after completing their studies: 190 hands quickly disappear.
Munnings carries on with his speech regardless, but when it finally comes to a close, one member of the audience cannot resist standing up and passing comment.
Maybe you weren’t paying attention when you asked for a show of hands,” he says, “but only 10 of 200 Russian LSE students want to return to Russia. These are the best and brightest students that Russia has to offer and they don’t want to go back home. Just what good news and a true picture of Russia are they supposed to be spreading?”
The audience member was none other than Jamison Firestone, managing partner of both Moscow law firm Firestone Duncan and London-based FD Advisory. His probing comment earned him an overwhelming ovation from the student body.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
President Vladimir Putin’s cruel tyranny is driven by paranoia
Apologists for the Kremlin are struggling. The Russian regime’s dogged defence of the blood-drenched Syrian dictatorship, and its persecution of the Pussy Riot musicians for their stunt in Moscow’s main cathedral, display its nastiest hallmark: support for repression at home and abroad.
Mr Putin’s return to power has eclipsed the liberal-sounding talk of his predecessor as president, Dmitry Medvedev. Russia’s leader has in recent weeks signed laws that criminalise defamation, introduce £6,000 fines for participants in unauthorised demonstrations, require non-profit outfits financed by grants from abroad to label themselves as “foreign agents”, and create a new blacklist of “harmful” internet sites.
Now comes the prosecution of Pussy Riot, a bunch of feminist performance artists made famous by their imprisonment and show trial. Their “crime” was to record a brief mime show at the altar of the cathedral of Christ the Saviour. They then added anti-Putin “music” (featuring scatological and blasphemous slogans) to suggest that they had actually held a concert there.
Many might find that in bad taste and would accept that police can arrest those using a holy place for political protest. But the three women on trial (who all deny involvement) have been in custody since March. They face up to seven years in prison on a charge of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred or hostility”. It all smacks of a grotesque official over-reaction and the growing and sinister influence of the Orthodox hierarchy.
Also a distant memory is Russia’s “reset” with America, which was supposed to herald a new era of cooperation. Since Mr Putin’s return, Russia’s foreign-policy rhetoric has been venomously anti-Western. It recently warned Finland, with startling bluntness, to stop working with Nato. The hostility is still largely a one-way street. Western companies grovel before Mr Putin (he recently kept oil-industry chiefs waiting for hours in an airless room with no chairs; they uttered not a squeak of complaint).
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
Invisible President
Dmitri Medvedev has entered his last week as president of Russia: on May 7, he will hand back the office to Vladimir Putin. Having served just one four-year term, he will be remembered as one of the country’s shortest-lived rulers. He will also be remembered as one of country’s shortest rulers. At no more than 5’3”, and with his propensity to wear huge Windsor knots, he often looks like a fourth-grader trying on daddy’s business suit.
What else will Russians remember of Medvedev? My guess is, nothing. People do not like to remember being made to look like fools, which is exactly what many Russians feel he did to them.
At the outset, Medvedev reached out to liberals and intellectuals. Weeks before his election, in February 2008, he had announced that his guiding principle was, “freedom is better than unfreedom.” People might have worried about a leader who found it necessary to turn this truism into a grand pronouncement, but, having been left out in the cold during the previous eight years of Putin’s reign, Russian liberals were eager to be engaged again. Over 40 people accepted invitations to join a newly constituted presidential council for human rights and civil society.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
Trendswatcher: Punk’s Not Dead – in Russia
© RIA Novosti.
Natalia Antonova 19:37 20/04/2012
People began using the phrase “punk is dead” before I was even born – but just when everyone starts believing it, someone comes along to prove them wrong. The latest people to do that, sadly, are the jailed members of feminist punk band Pussy Riot.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, and Yekaterina Samusevich will remain in pretrial detention in Moscow until June 24, while investigators continue looking into their alleged role in a so-called “punk prayer service” that took place within the Cathedral of Christ the Savior back in February – and outraged many Orthodox Christians. The “prayer” itself was directed against President-elect Vladimir Putin.
As a Christian, I find it hard to speak about the actions of Pussy Riot. I don’t think that such performances belong in church, even a church such as the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, which has had a complicated history since first being destroyed by the Soviets and rebuilt following the fall of the USSR – for many Muscovites, this holy site is nowadays associated with what is known as “VIP-tusovkas” or “VIP-gatherings,” as opposed to with the Orthodox faith. Even bearing that in mind, and bearing in mind the fact that the Orthodox tradition has a long history of so-called holy fools that engage in mischief, I cannot support the performance of Pussy Riot. When I saw it on YouTube, I felt sadness, bewilderment, and hurt.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
