Anti-Putin punk girls go on hunger strike

[pieter]

Anti-Putin punks go on hunger strike after court ruling
Published on 4 July 2012 - 7:08pm



Three members of an all-girl punk band who were charged with hooliganism after singing an anti-Vladimir Putin song in a Russian church went on hunger strike Wednesday after a ruling to fast-track their case.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Maria Alekhina -- all members of Pussy Riot -- swore off food after a Moscow court ruled Wednesday they and their lawyers had only five more days to study the case materials.


A combo photo of Yekaterina Samutsevich (left), Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, and Maria Alyokhina

"I announce a hunger strike because it is unlawful," said Tolokonnikova, wearing a T-shirt with the famous slogan of the Spanish Civil War, "No pasaran!" ("They shall not pass"), emblazoned across it.

"Until July 9th is not enough (time) for me. I think it is absolutely unlawful," she said in the Tagansky district court.

"I am categorically against it and I announce a hunger strike," Alekhina also said after the court delivered a separate ruling on her and another one on Samutsevich.



The defence team wants to have until September 1 to read the materials, with attorney Mark Feigin saying they had to read through nearly 2,800 pages not including electronic evidence.

The rulings come after investigators appealed to bring forward the trial of the women, claiming lawyers are dragging out the case.

"That will be enough time to read the materials," the judge said.

Defence attorney Nikolai Polozov accused the judge of carrying out a political order.

"This is a return to the Stalin trials," he said. Speaking to reporters, he also said their team came under pressure from the investigation.

"It is harder and harder for the investigation to answer what they are jailed for," he told AFP. "Basically their job now is to hold the trial as fast as possible, hand down a sentence and send them to a prison colony."

In a repeat of the chaotic scenes that have marked most of the legal process against the three members of the rock band, police detained around a dozen Pussy Riot supporters who gathered outside the court in central Moscow.

Those detained included three activists who locked themselves in a metal cage outside the courtroom before police cut the locks and whisked them away, an AFP correspondent said.

Tolokonnikova, Samutsevich and Alekhina were arrested after their band barged into Russia's main cathedral, Church of Christ the Saviour, in February and have been detained since March.

The masked women sang a song calling for Putin's ouster and criticising the Russian Orthodox Church's close ties to the Kremlin.

The young women, two of whom have children, are charged with hooliganism by an organised group, an offence with a maximum jail term of seven years.

The trio have now been held in pre-trial detention for around four months in defiance of pleas from supporters for them to be released.

Polozov said a preliminary hearing of their trial was likely to take place between July 19 and July 24. The women are currently detained until July 24.

Their performance has caused an uproar and proved highly polarising in the predominantly Orthodox country.

Thousands of worshippers say the women desecrated holy relics kept in the church, while their supporters said the possible punishment would be exceptionally harsh.

Over 100 of Russia's best known actors, directors and musicians called for the women's release in an open letter last month, saying they presented no "real danger" to society and that the criminal case against them compromised the Russian judicial system.

A Pussy Riot supporter wearing a T-shirt with a slogan saying "Virgin Mary hears us" expressed doubt that the high-profile support would help the arrested singers.

"I think the behaviour of the state is absolutely criminal in using the church to cover up their acts. This is a deeply political case," historian Yelena Glushko said outside the courtroom.

© ANP/AFP

www.forbes.com/sites/katyasoldak/2012/06/14/pussy-riot-putin-the-church-and-human-rights/

[nictoe]

Russian Punk Band Is Found Guilty of Hooliganism for Anti-Putin Protest

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
August 17, 2012

MOSCOW — A Moscow judge delivered guilty verdicts on Friday afternoon against three young women who staged a protest against Vladimir V. Putin in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior last February and whose jailing and trial on hooliganism charges have generated worldwide criticism of constraints on political speech in Russia.

The verdicts, against three members of a band called Pussy Riot, were widely expected, and suspense had built over how severe a punishment they would receive. Prosecutors had demanded three-year prison terms but the judge, Marina Syrova, did not immediately announce the sentences and continued to read from the lengthy verdict on Friday afternoon.

Outside the courthouse, hundreds of demonstrators gathered and shouted, “Free Pussy Riot!”

Riot police officers arrested dozens of them, including the former chess champion Garry Kasparov, who is active in the Russian political opposition. Mr. Kasparov fought with the police and appeared to be beaten as he was bundled into a paddy wagon.

Near the start of the highly anticipated proceedings, the judge said that Pussy Riot’s so-called punk prayer in Moscow’s main cathedral had amounted to the crime of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred. Because the women acted as a group, the maximum sentence under the law is seven years in prison.

They have been in jail since March and a chorus of supporters, including some of the music world’s biggest stars, has demanded their immediate release. Rallies in support of the women were held in dozens of cities around the world on Friday.

The case has become a touchstone in the unfolding political drama that began in Russia after disputed parliamentary elections last December. That is partly because of the sympathetic appearance of the defendants — two are mothers of young children — partly because their group uses music to carry its message, and because it has pitted them against a united power-structure: the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church.

While the case has allowed opponents of Mr. Putin, the president, to portray his government as squelching free speech and presiding over a rigged judicial system, it has also handed the government an opportunity to portray its political opponents as obscene, disrespectful rabble-rousers, liberal urbanites backed by the West in a conspiracy against the Russian state and the Russian church.

The saga began in February when the women infiltrated Moscow’s main cathedral wearing colorful balaclavas, and pranced around in front of the golden Holy Doors leading into the altar, dancing, chanting and lip-syncing for what would later become a music video of a profane song in which they beseeched the Virgin Mary to rid Russia of Mr. Putin.

Security guards quickly stripped them of their guitars, but the video was completed with splices of footage from another church.

Because of the support they have received from stars like Sting and Madonna, the women of Pussy Riot have become more famous, at least outside Russia, than the opposition figures who led large antigovernment street protests in Moscow throughout the winter and spring.

But while they have become minor heroes in the entertainment world, Pussy Riot is far more political than musical: Its members have never released a song or an album, and they do not seem to have any serious aspirations to do so.

On Thursday, with tensions rising in anticipation of the verdict and sentencing, the authorities said that threats had been made against Judge Syrova and that bodyguards had been assigned to her.

Mr. Putin, commenting on the case briefly while in London for the Olympics earlier this month, said he hoped that the women were not judged “too severely,” but that there was nothing good about what they had done and that the decision was the court’s to make.

As the trial opened, the women — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 23, Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, and Maria Alyokhina, 24 — apologized, saying they had never intended to offend the Orthodox Church but rather sought to make a political statement against Mr. Putin and against the church patriarch, Kirill I, for supporting Mr. Putin in his campaign for a third term as president.

But prosecutors and lawyers for religious people who where described as victims of the stunt said the women were motivated by religious hatred. The defendants were accused of committing “moral harm” and even of practicing Satanism.

Like defendants in almost all Russian criminal trials, the women were held in the courtroom in a glass enclosure.

As the trial continued, the women seemed emboldened by their mounting international support, including from Madonna, who paused a concert in Moscow to give a speech urging their release and later performed wearing a black bra with “Pussy Riot” stenciled in bold letters on her back.

In a closing statement, Ms. Tolokonnikova, the most outspoken of the defendants, railed against repression in Russia.

“To my deepest regret, this mock trial is close to the standards of the Stalinist troikas,” she said.

“Who is to blame for the performance at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour and for our being put on trial after the concert? The authoritarian political system is to blame. What Pussy Riot does is oppositional art or politics.”

She added, “In any event, it is a form of civil action in circumstances where basic human rights, civil and political freedoms are suppressed.”