Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

APEC and Pussy Riot

The Moscow News

At first sight, there should be no reason to mention the APEC summit in Vladivostok and the Pussy Riot trial in the same sentence, let alone suggest that one could affect the other.
Yet, bizarrely, that is exactly what is happening.

While there is acknowledgement by Russia’s international partners that the workings of the country’s judicial system are a sovereign matter, in today’s highly globalized economy, no country is ever completely an island when it comes to applying the rule of law.

Whatever one thinks of the rights and wrongs of the Pussy Riot protest, the case has troubled leading domestic and international business figures alike – precisely because it has presented Russian courts as subject to pressure from the authorities.

While staging a punk protest in a place of worship would likely lead to prosecution and minor charges in many countries, the severity of the punishment meted out to these three young women is clearly due to the political overtones of the case – no matter what the prosecutors may say about its strictly “anti-religious” nature.