Pussy Riot, Russia 2012

In February 2012, four members of a feminist Russian punk-rock band named “Pussy Riot,” protesting against President Vladimir Putin’s government, walked into the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow. They wore bright-colored balaclavas and performed a provocative song called “Punk Prayer,” with lyrics that called on the Virgin Mary to drive Putin away, and condemned the close relationship of the church and the Russian government.

Shortly after, three of the women were arrested and detained for months as a 2,800-page indictment was compiled, accusing them of criminal hooliganism and religious hatred. On 17.08.2012, the three were convicted and sentenced to two years imprisonment, after a trial widely condemned by outside observers as an attack on free speech. Pussy Riot members face threat of violence in Russian jail.

Pussy Riot is a Russian feminist punk-rock group based in Moscow. Founded in August 2011, the band stages provocative performances about Russian political life in unusual and unauthorized locations, such as Lobnoye Mesto in Red Square, on top of a trolleybus, or on a scaffold in the Moscow Metro.

Warning from Pussy Riot lawyer

A lawyer for Pussy Riot has warned that three members of the feminist punk band sentenced to jail last week could face violence and discrimination because of the intense state campaign against them.

“For half a year, state-run television has built up a very negative image of them – that they’re blasphemers, heretics,” said Nikolai Polozov, a member of the women’s defence team. “The only source of information in prisons is state-run TV.

“We have a serious basis to think they can be faced with physical harm, moral pressure and even violence.”

Maria Alyokhina, 24, Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, were found guilty last week of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred for February 2012 performance in Moscow’s official cathedral criticising Vladimir Putin.

Polozov said he would appeal against their sentence – two years in a minimum security prison colony – within two weeks.

Alyokhina has already protested against the band’s treatment. In a letter handed to Polozov from the detention centre in southern Moscow where they have spent the past five months, she described how prison officials and special forces troops had treated them harshly. “I found this strange, usually they’re not so rude with us, so that means they’ve got an order,” she wrote. “I want to believe that all will end well, but everything that’s happening points to it being otherwise.”

Russian opposition activists remain enraged by the sentencing. On 21.08.2012, hackers attacked the site of the Khamovnichesky court, which hosted the trial against the three women, peppering it with slogans decrying Russia’s justice system. The hackers also defaced the site’s main page with a video by Azis, a gay Bulgarian singer.

As well as exposing the Kremlin’s crackdown on dissent, the trial has also shone a spotlight on its increasingly conservative policies, encouraged by the Russian Orthodox church, including repressive anti-gay laws.

The trial has prompted criticism from some of Putin’s closest allies. Yet many government supporters continue to promote the theory that Pussy Riot was part of a western plot to weaken Russia.

“It seems that the planned and well-orchestrated provocation called ‘Pussy Riot’ succeeded,” Vladimir Yakunin, the Kremlin-connected head of Russian Railways and a high-profile supporter of the Orthodox church, wrote this week. The group, he said, was organised in response to growing Orthodox unity.

“As a person, I feel sorry for these young women and it’s unfortunate that our law enforcement system did not find those who directed this performance, financed it and are now trying to get political dividends from it.”

Police are searching for other members of Pussy Riot who they believe were involved in the February performance of an anti-Putin “punk prayer” at Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.

Court site hacked

A slogan denouncing President Vladimir Putin was posted on the site as was an appeal for the trio’s release along with a video clip of one of the band’s latest anti-Putin songs and a clip by Bulgarian singer Azis, local media reported.

The hack attack – claimed by AnonymousRussia, which says it is affiliated with hacking activist group Anonymous – comes amid a chorus of criticism of the sentences, which Western governments and singers said were disproportionate and opponents of Putin called part of a crackdown on dissent.

A screenshot posted by opposition activist Ilya Yashin on Twitter showed the court’s web page topped by an inscription reading: “Putin’s thieving gang is plundering our country! Wake up, comrades!” Another caption called for the release of the band’s jailed members.

Criticism

The United States and the European Union called the sentences disproportionate and Washington has urged Russian authorities to “review” the case.

Human rights groups and musicians including Madonna and Paul McCartney have also criticised the trial, but opinion polls indicate few Russians sympathise with Pussy Riot and support from local musicians has been muted.

Russia police said they were searching for other members of Pussy Riot and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismissed Western criticism of the sentences, saying people should not “go into hysterics” about the case.

Also, democracy activist and former world chess champion Garry Kasparov was called in for police questioning over claims he bit an officer on the hand when he was detained at a protest in support of Pussy Riot. Mr Kasparov has called the accusation “drivel”.

Voina connection

The connection between Pussy Riot and the political performance art group Voina has been highlighted by some of the group’s critics and has been called an “aggravating moral circumstance” in the eyes of the conservative public (which constitutes about 60 per cent of Russians).

Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Yekaterina Samutsevich participated in some Voina performances. Tolokonnikova, while pregnant, was part of a performance in which couples were filmed having sex in the Biology Museum in Moscow in 2008 which has been called an “orgy” by the media.

Voina (Russian: Война = War) is a Russian street-art group known for their provocative and politically charged works of performance art. The group has had more than sixty members, including former and current students of the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography, Moscow State University, and Tartu University. However, the group does not cooperate with state or private institutions, and is not supported by any Russian curators or gallerists.

The activities of Voina have ranged from street protests, symbolic pranks in public places, and performance-art happenings, to vandalism and destruction of public property.