Pussy Riot’s Trial Has Begun

by Whitney Kimball on August 2, 2012 · 3 comments Newswire

Russian art collective and punk band Pussy Riot is this week’s target in Putin’s general, persistent crackdown on everything. Three of the collective’s ten members defended themselves against state charges of “hooliganism” when the case went on trial Monday, July 30th.

The group was arrested in March for a guerrilla performance of their song “”Holy Mother, Blessed Virgin, Expel Putin!” at Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral on February 12th. The performance came at the peak of a series of Russian protests in advance of Putin’s reelection in March. He didn’t like the message sent in the video above: the girls rock out in ski masks (balaclavas) amongst shooshing nuns, singing for the Virgin Mary to “rid us of Putin,” with the refrain “Holy shit, shit, shit”. As a result, members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 23, Maria Alekhina, 24, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 29, now face a potential seven year prison sentence, while the other seven remain in hiding.

Given recent precedents for dissenters, the group should be worried. Pussy Riot’s lawyers claim that the women, two of whom have children, are not given adequate food or rest. Amnesty International has deemed them “prisoners of conscience” and called for their immediate release.

Around spring 2011, female members of the radical anarchist performance collective Voina got the idea for Pussy Riot after studying the American riot grrrl movement. Readers may remember a few of Voina’s anti-government protests: dicking a bridgeflipping and igniting cop cars; vaginal chicken-smuggling.

The protest called attention to close ties between church and state—church leader Patriarch Kirill has been a big Putin supporter—and though Pussy Riot has offered a public apology, the church refuses to accept it. On trial, the women have even been asked questions to implicate them as disingenuous Catholics; the judge specifically asked whether they “crossed themselves in the manner that all citizens do,” because, according to one witness, one of the performers in the video “crossed herself kind of rapidly.” The questions seem particularly poignant given that the women are on trial for protesting the overlap between church and state.

Reuters notes that this is “Russia’s highest-profile trial since former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was convicted for a second time in 2010.” And it won’t be the last; on Tuesday, protest leader and blogger Alexei Navalny was charged with theft, with a possible ten year sentence. Fortunately, Pussy Riot is already proving to be just as big a pain the ass.

AnimalNY’s Marina Galperina has the full story, from the initial protest, to who can help them, to subsequent protests, to a Pussy Rior supporter who’s sewn his own mouth shut, to the latest trial news.

{ 3 comments }

friendship person August 3, 2012 at 6:26 pm

i hope theyre executed

WirklichVerruckt August 4, 2012 at 5:44 pm

The church has been running its game uncontested for two thousand years . . . surely they can wait 5 minutes while an alternate message is delivered. Also, anyone who thinks art has it tough here should consider their example. Putin’s critics have a history of being professionally assassinated.  

Aron Namenwirth August 11, 2012 at 4:37 pm

Punk will never die

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