WELL, IT’S BEEN all over the mainstream news, but you might have missed it. Since their sold-out performance at the Christ the Saviour Cathedral in Moscow on the 21st February, it-girls Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich from the feminist punk band Pussy Riot have received two years’ jail time each, charged with ‘hooliganism’. Well, we all know a screechy punk dirge can be a bit of an earful, but it wasn’t that bad! Their punk prayer implored the Virgin Mary to “rid us of Putin”, protesting the Russian Orthodox Church’s support for the Russian leader. The global media hinged upon the state’s disregard for legal process and breach of free speech, wherein the defendants were imprisoned, refused bail, denied food and sleep, and given just three days to prepare their defence. Amnesty International rightly express concern that these young women will now face labour camps, physical and sexual abuse.
But all over fundaMENTAList Russia, bloggers and other anti-Putin elements also face arrest, whilst the supporting church makes massive land-grabs. It’s a moot point whether Pussy Riot have been singled out for maltreatment or not – human rights violations are routine in Russian and former U.S.S.R. jails, where conditions are even shitter than it was during the Soviet era. In Kazakhstan, 12 oil workers were jailed after thousands demonstrated for better pay during a bitter seven month strike, and all their appeals for release were refused. Scores were killed and wounded in the town of Zhanaozen after security opened fire on demonstrators, and survivors are now being persecuted for allegedly ‘inciting social conflict’. The show-trial of the band came to symbolise repression in totalitarian Russia, but even outside of the warzones like Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia torture, detention without trial and murder by the state are par for the course.
In the meantime, we express solidarity with the three imprisoned, as well as the two Pussy Rioters who have now successfully escaped Russia, and the 12 of the collective who remain to continue their work.
indymedia.org.uk/en/2012/07/498480.html
https://network23.org/aberdeenanarchists/we-are-all-pussy-riot
http://www.schnews.org.uk/stories/ShowTrial-Girls
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19385936
