let the Pussy go free
Posted: September 13, 2012 Filed under: Article of the day | Tags: freedom, moscow, music, russia Leave a comment
Medvedev Says Rockers Have Served Enough Jail Time for Cathedral Performance
By ELLEN BARRY
MOSCOW — Prime Minister Dmitri A. Medvedev said Wednesday that he believed that three female punk rockers jailed for a profane stunt in Moscow’s main Russian Orthodox cathedral should be released rather than serve out their two-year sentences, weighing in on a case that has drawn widespread condemnation in the West.
At a meeting with officials from United Russia, the pro-Kremlin party that he leads, Mr. Medvedev was careful to assure his audience that he did not approve of the women’s performance of an anti-Kremlin song at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, saying that even thinking about it made him nauseated.
But he went on to say that further incarceration would be “unproductive” — the most explicit commentary to come from a high-ranking official since the Aug. 17 sentencing.
“Imprisonment is a very severe — I would even say a frightening — responsibility,” Mr. Medvedev said. “What has already happened — that this well-known group of girls have been in prison quite a long time — is a very serious punishment for everything they did, regardless of the sentence.”
The six months they have already served, he said in remarks that were shown on television, is “fully enough to make them think about what happened, because of their stupidity or for some other reasons.”
“So prolonging their time in conditions of imprisonment seems not to be productive,” he added.
It is not clear whether Mr. Medvedev’s words will have any effect, but a lawyer for the punk rockers, who perform as Pussy Riot, said he thought that the Russian authorities might want to rid themselves of a case that has turned out to be more damaging than expected.
“In the end the authorities got themselves caught in a trap,” the lawyer, Nikolai Polozov, told the radio station Kommersant-FM. “The international community gives an unambiguous assessment of this case, and Russia’s reputation is rapidly falling, and the authorities are trying to find some solution so that they can emerge from this episode with a pretty face.”
Mr. Medvedev, who was president from 2008 until May, attracted support from urban liberals during his term, and his agreement to step down to make way for Vladimir V. Putin’s return as president helped set off protests last winter. He has said little about the raft of repressive measures introduced since he stepped down, or about Pussy Riot, which has been held up by pro-Kremlin commentators as an example of dangerous radicalism that has infected Russian society and must be stamped out.
A film that ran on Tuesday on the state-controlled Rossiya-1 channel asserted that Pussy Riot’s performance was planned and financed by an exiled tycoon, Boris Berezovsky, an enemy of Mr. Putin’s.
In August, shortly before the sentencing, Mr. Putin himself said he did not believe that the three women “should be judged too severely for this.” Though they could have received a sentence of as much as seven years, prosecutors requested a three-year sentence, and a judge gave them two.
Mr. Polozov noted that Mr. Medvedev had also taken a personal interest in the case of Taisia Osipova, the wife of an opposition activist who was charged with drug violations that her supporters said were trumped up.
Mr. Medvedev’s involvement evidently did her no good — a judge last month sentenced her to eight years in prison, double the time that prosecutors had requested.
“Obviously, you can’t say that the judge will do whatever Dmitri Anatolievich says,” he said. “But if the judge shares his opinion, obviously we would consider that a plus.”
Russian punk band found guilty of hooliganism, sentenced to two years
Posted: August 17, 2012 Filed under: Article of the day | Tags: freedom, music, punk, Pussy riot, russia, soviet, yoskke Leave a commentRussian punk band found guilty of hooliganism, sentenced to two years
By Dylan Stableford,
Click on the photo to see Pussy Riot slide show (Pussy Riot/Live Journal)
Three members of Pussy Riot — a Russian punk band and feminist collective that mocked Russian president Vladamir Putin during a “punk prayer” in a Moscow cathedral–have been found guilty of hooliganism and sentenced to two years in jail
Judge Marina Syrova announced the verdict from a district court in central Moscow, about two miles from the Christ the Saviour Cathedral where the guerrilla group performed its “flash” stunt.
The band members–Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, Maria Alyokhina, 24, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30–were arrested on March 3, several weeks after the performance, and charged with “hooliganism.” They’ve been in jail ever since.
Their trial drew enormous international interest, sparking catcalls from international free-speech advocates and spawning dozens of protests. Some of those were reported on Twitter during the verdict and sentencing, involving an impromptu musical concert and some protests in public areas in Moscow and London.
Madonna, Bjork, Paul McCartney and Courtney Love were among a long list of musicians to come out in support of Pussy Riot, calling on the Russian government to set the band members free. Last week in Berlin, more than 400 people joined a protest led by electro-singer Peaches.
“In one of the most extravagant displays,” the Associated Press said, “Reykjavik Mayor Jon Gnarr rode through the streets of the Icelandic capital in a Gay Pride parade … dressed like a band member–wearing a bright pink dress and matching balaclava–while lip-synching to one of Pussy Riot’s songs.”
What started as “a punk-infused political prank,” London’s Independent said, “has rapidly snowballed into one of the most notorious court cases in post-Soviet Russian history.”
Five members of the group, which formed in 2011, were arrested in January after a video of a Putin-baiting performance in Moscow’s Red Square circulated online. They were detained for several hours by police, fined and released, NPR said.
But the 10-member Pussy Riot, inspired by the American “riot grrrl” movement and bands like Bikini Kill, vowed more protest performances.
Pussy Riot’s stunt at Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral, a Russian Orthodox church, was a response, they said, to Patriarch Kirill’s public support of Putin in the build-up to Russia’s presidential election. Putin won a third term as president in March.
“Holy Mother, send Putin packing!” the group sang.
The Guardian called the trial, which began on July 30, “worse than Soviet era.”
“By the end of the first week of Pussy Riot’s trial,” the Guardian’s Miriam Elder wrote last week, “everyone in the shabby Moscow courthouse was tired. Guards, armed with submachine guns, grabbed journalists and threw them out of the room at will. The judge, perched in front of a shabby Russian flag, refused to look at the defense. And the police dog–a 100 [pound] black Rottweiler–no longer sat in the corner she had occupied since the start of Russia’s trial of the year, but barked and foamed at the mouth as if she were in search of blood.”
Lawyers for the women complained during the trial that the trio were being starved and tortured in prison. Two threatened to go on a hunger strike after they were initially jailed.
“Their treatment has caused deep disquiet among many Russians, who feel the women are–to coin a phrase from the 1967 trial of members of the Rolling Stones–butterflies being broken on a wheel,” the BBC’s Daniel Sandford wrote.
Syrova was subjected to unspecified threats during the trial, Russian authorities announced on Thursday–assigning bodyguards to protect her before and after she announced the verdict.
Several Russian pop stars, though, questioned the outpouring of support for Pussy Riot.
“What is so great about Pussy Riot that all these international stars support them?” Russian singer Valeria wrote on her website, according to Reuters. “They must be saying this because someone ordered them to.”
“Art and politics are inseparable for us,” the band said in an interview with the online newspaper Gazeta.ru in February. “We try to make political art. Performances and their rehearsals are our job. Life in Pussy Riot takes a lot of time.”
We follow the Syrian exiles risking their lives to smuggle essential supplies to those fighting the regime.
Posted: August 1, 2012 Filed under: Article of the day | Tags: freedom, israel, middle east, syria, turkey Leave a commentSyria’s opposition activists and the Free Syrian Army are hugely under-equipped and rely on meagre supplies trickling over the borders from Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.
fhofficesystems 