Every now and again the rhetoric of patriarchal power reveals itself in a specially pernicious way .
Last week in Moscow, Madonna lent her voice to the growing international condemnation of the trial of members of the feminist performance art group, Pussy Riot.
Three members of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot said Vladimir Putin’s Russia was the one on trial as they delivered closing arguments on Wednesday in a case seen as a key test of the powerful president’s desire to crackdown on dissent.
“This is a trial of the whole government system of Russia, which so likes to show its harshness toward the individual, its indifference to his honour and dignity,” Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, one of the trio on trial said in an impassioned statement. “If this political system throws itself against three girls … it shows this political system is afraid of truth.”
The judge set 17 August as the day she would deliver a verdict against the women, charged with hooliganism motivated by religious hatred following an anti-Putin performance in a Moscow cathedral.
Prosecutors have asked for a three-year sentence, arguing that the women sought to insult all of Russian
Pussy Riot members, from left, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich sit in a glass cage at a court room in Moscow. Photograph: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP
Orthodoxy and denying they were carrying out a political protest.
Tolokonnikova called the charges against them a “political order for repression” and denounced Putin’s “totalitarian-authoritarian system”, insisting Pussy Riot were an example of “opposition art”.
“Even though we are behind bars, we are freer than those people,” she said, looking at the prosecution from inside the glass cage where she and her two bandmates, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich, have spent the nine-day trial. “We can say what we want, while they can only say what political censorship allows.
“Maybe they think it wouldn’t be wrong to try us for speaking against Putin and his system, but they can’t say that because it’s been forbidden,” she said, wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the revolutionary words “No Pasaran”.
Couching their case in the long plight of political prisoners in the country, the three women urged Russians to reject Putin’s system and embrace freedom.
Alyokhina, 24, compared the trial to the Soviet Union’s persecution of Joseph Brodsky, when the young poet was charged with being a “social parasite”, becoming a global cause celebre that highlighted the government’s farcical control over culture.
“We are not guilty – the whole world is talking about it,” Alyokhina said, hours after Madonna became the latest, and biggest, star to come to the women’s defence.
“I am not scared of you,” Alyokhina told the court. “I’m not scared of lies and fiction, or the badly formed deception that is the verdict of this so-called court. Because my words will live, thanks to openness.
“When thousands of people will read and watch this, this freedom will grow with every caring person who listens to us in this country.”
Lawyers for Pussy Riot have been expecting a guilty verdict and three-year sentence, but said that was called into question following the judge’s delay in issuing her decision. Lawyer Nikolai Polozov said growing international attention, including recent messages of support from the likes of Madonna and Yoko Ono, had had their effect. “To take a quick decision under such pressure is very dangerous for the authorities, so they’ve taken a time out,” he told the Guardian. “No matter what the verdict is, we have won,” he added.
Each woman ended her closing statement to loud applause from the Russian journalists sitting in the courtroom.
Yekaterina Samutsevich is seen here being escorted into court Russian prosecutors have asked for three years’ in prison for three women musicians accused of inciting religious hatred during a protest in a cathedral. The three members of the punk band Pussy Riot played a song attacking Russian leader Vladimir Putin in front of an altar […]
The Free Pussy riot campaign has gone global, hitting at the heart of oppression, semi slavery and open violence against women, in the sexist macho State and the medieval inquisitorial evil church. update https://thefreeonline.wordpress.com/2012/07/31/ God-is-punishing-jailed-pussy-riot-mothers-says-patriarch Аction […]
The trial continues of 3 women from the punk band Pussy Riot. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Mariya Alekhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich were taken into custody in February after singing a protest song against Putin in Moscow. They have spent already 5 months without bail for nothing more than playing a song in a church without permission. Their […]
Trial Update. Tuesday. Witnesses were called who swore they were outraged by Pussyriot playing in a church…. God is judging Pussy Riot, says Russian church leader.
Yekaterina Samutsevich is seen here being escorted into court
Russian prosecutors have asked for three years’ in prison for three women musicians accused of inciting religious hatred during a protest in a cathedral.
The three members of the punk band Pussy Riot played a song attacking Russian leader Vladimir Putin in front of an altar on 21 February.
They told the court their performance was a political act, not aimed at hurting the feelings of believers.
Supporters of the women have condemned the case as disproportionate.
Maria Alyokhina, 24, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 29, could have faced a maximum sentence of seven years.
The trial continues of 3 women from the punk band Pussy Riot.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Mariya Alekhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich were taken into custody in February after singing a protest song against Putin in Moscow.
They have spent already 5 months without bail for nothing more than playing a song in a church without permission. Their detention is seen as a direct revenge against the lively anti Putin movement that followed disputed elections.
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Corrupt Church leaders called for heavy sentences, then blamed foreign infiltrators, then claimed God is judging Pussy Riot
Church leaders foaming at the mouth
Corrupt Church officials linked directly to Vladimir Putin have demanded 7 year sentences for Blasphemy and indulged openly in anti women tirades and sexist language. They described Putin as a ‘Gift from God’ and dubbed the jailings as ‘God’s Judgement’.
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Defendants ill after sleep deprivation torture
Medics were called when the women said they felt unwell on the third day of the trial on Wednesday, the court said.
The defendants say they are being deprived of sleep and are poorly fed, according to a defence lawyer.
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Singers and Artists support PussyRiot
Madonna ,Sting, Peter Gabriel ,Franz Ferdinand and Alex Kapranos have supported Pussy Riot
The Free Pussy riot campaign has gone global, hitting at the heart of oppression, semi slavery and open violence against women, in the sexist macho State and the medieval inquisitorial evil church.
Yana Zhadanova of the Femen movement charged the Russian Patriarch yelling Free Pussy Riot, but it was she who got beaten up and sentenced to 15 days prison.
Free Yana Zhdanova ..
“Kirill had just stepped out from a plane when our activist Yana Zhdanova performed her ‘sex attack,'” FEMEN‘s Inna Shevchenko tells ANIMAL over Skype. The Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill the First was about to launch into a press conference at a Ukrainian airport, but, as Inna says, “We don’t need his shit.”
On their LiveJournal, FEMEN clarifies: “Ukrainian women are proud and free and will never kiss a copper’s boot, even if it is hidden under the stinking Pope cassock.” The quote reads like an homage to the classic Voina action when a performance artist, dressed in a priest cassock and a cop uniform, robbed a supermarket to point out the hypocrisy of Russia’s incestuous relationship of church and state.
FEMEN have written that the action Kill Kirill was in support of “arrested activists.” The Eastern Orthodox Patriarch of Russia has recently condemned “devious” activist rockers Pussy Riot to hell and his influence allegedly resulted in Pussy Riot facing seven years in prison for the blasphemy of a protest song in a Moscow church. Meanwhile, Kirill was caught in a scandal when his $30,000 designer watch was Photoshopped out of a church press photo. They forgot about the shadow.
Three members of Pussy Riot, the Russian feminist punk-rock band, began a hunger strike after a Moscow court suddenly told them they must prepare their defense for tria in 4 days. Maria Alyokhina, Yakaterina Samutsevich and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova were taken into custody in March, after the group’s February performance of “Virgin Mary Put Putin Away,” an anti-Putin song, inside the Russian Orthodox Church‘s main cathedral, asking the Virgin Mary to chase President Vladimir Putin out of power. The three women were arrested over four months ago and have been held without bail on charges of criminal hooliganism — which carry a possible seven-year prison sentence. Two other female members of the band have avoided arrest thus far. The Church has called for heavy sentences and the case goes to the heart of the open anti women bigotry built into the State and Church.
And so, Yana, brandishing only the provocative slogan of “Kill Kirill” on her chest, rushed the Patriarch. She was grabbed, imprisoned and sentenced to 15 days in prison. The courts refuse to see her action as a protest and instead are charging her with hooliganism. Inna tells us that while Yana was in custody, she was roughly interrogated as the cops are confounded about how she snuck her way into this exclusive, televised, heavily guarded event. After the “sex attack,” Kirill continued, routinely mumbling out a blessing.
And so, FEMEN continue to resist Russian political influence and orthodoxy with their signature tactic–their bare breasts as weapons of shock and awe. They write that they want to keep Kirill “far from political and social life of Ukraine” and are “against such visits of Kiril brotherhood to Ukraine that [brings its] Russian shit to sick Ukrainian society.” Something tells us this visit will be quite memorable.
Yekaterina Samutsevich is seen here being escorted into court
Sting, Madonna give support: Putin and Patriarch witch-hunt Pussy Riot « The Free
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