Wednesday, August 01, 2012

Skepchick: Pussy Riot is On Trial Today

Pussy Riot Is on Trial Today
by DebGod
Skepchick

Have you heard about Pussy Riot? They’re Russian. They’re feminists. They’re largely anonymous. They’re a punk-rock collective of about a dozen women. And several members are facing up to seven years in jail for their “blasphemous” protest against Russian President Vladimir Putin in a Moscow cathedral.

Pussy Riot formed last September in the wake of Putin’s announcement that he would run again for President. According to NPR, the young women “were galvanized originally by their opposition to government policies against women.” If you know about the Riot grrrl movement in the ’90s, their ethic will sound familiar to you.

Wearing brightly-colored dresses and tights, even in winter weather, and with balaclavas covering their faces for anonymity, they’ve staged a handful of flashmob-style protests across Moscow in the last year to protest Putin’s policies. In January, eight members performed the punk song “Revolt in Russia” (also called “Putin Has Pissed Himself”) in the symbolic Red Square

The members were detained and fined for the illegal protest, but they were released.

Their next performance carried a harsher penalty. In February, five members went to the front of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior (an area women aren’t even allowed in!) to perform a protest “prayer” to the Virgin Mary to “throw Putin out.” (Video here.) The stunt lasted for about a minute and ended with guards leading the women away. The punishment was trivial at first, with one member’s husband saying, ”The police came and they didn’t even open a case.” But that changed in the following weeks.

The Russian Orthodox Church, which has a cozy relationship with the government, condemned Pussy Riot’s actions as “blasphemous” and called for the group to be punished. Head Patriarch Kirill said that the Church was “under attack” and that the “Devil has laughed at all of us…We have no future if we allow mocking in front of great shrines, and if some see such mocking as some sort of valour, as an expression of political protest, as an acceptable action or a harmless joke.”

The Guardian has this quote from the church’s spokesman:

God condemns what they’ve done. I’m convinced that this sin will be punished in this life and the next, God revealed this to me just like he revealed the gospels to the church. There’s only one way out: repentance.


A few weeks later, three women and the aforementioned husband were arrested. He was soon released, but the women face the charge of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred or hostility,” which carries a punishment of up to seven years in prison. According to The Economist, “[t]he official text of the indictment from the prosecutor’s office speaks of the trio’s ‘blasphemous acts’ that inflicted ‘weighty suffering on those persons who find their spiritual home in the service of Orthodox ideals’.”

The husband said, “It was only after [the video] appeared on YouTube under the name ‘Virgin Mary Chuck Out Putin’ and got all this attention—Patriarch Kirill watched it and, so the investigators told us, rang Putin and the head of the Moscow police—that it became this great big deal, that they decided that it was some sort of crime.”

To Read the Rest of the Report and to Access the Videos of Pussy Riot Activism/Performances/Interviews and to Access More Reports

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