Free Pussy Riot (Photo credit: gaelx)
I spent part of the weekend finally catching up on the Pussy Riot news and found this excellent piece by Matthew O’Leary — short and to the point.
As O’Leary writes, on February 21, 2012, this three-woman punk band — Maria Alyokhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, and Yekaterina Samutsevich — sang “Virgin Mary, Put Putin Away” in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. The song, performed with the Dollar Store-style face masks that have come to symbolize the protest, included a plea for the Virgin Mary to become a feminist. Other lyrics were “Shit, shit, the Lord’s shit!” and suggested that the supreme leader of the Russian Orthodox Church believed in Putin instead of God. The song also begged the Virgin Mary to expel President Vladimir Putin from the Kremlin.
The YouTube version of “Virgin Mary, Put Putin Away” has almost a million hits (the complete lyrics accompany the clip, which shows anxious security guards and elderly women with confused looks — very fun to watch).
Yes, punk rock 101 and remarkably tame compared to the antics of The Sex Pistols in the 1970s.
Probably the most damaging thing about the whole case are the fantastic photos coming out of the trial and what is happening outside, including this one (left) showing former Soviet chess champion Garry Kasparov. After criticizing Putin’s attempts to suppress freedom of speech (eloquently, in English), Kasparov was hauled away with cameras recording, caught laughing and becoming increasingly annoyed. Off camera, the arrest became violent, as Kasparov was severely beaten.
Pussy Riot Global Day (Photo credit: Eyes on Rights)
The Pussy Riot three were convicted and sentenced to two years on the charge of “hooliganism.” The case seems a text book example of how tyrants should notdeal with dissent. Putin’s ham-handed repression has elevated Pussy Riot into a cause celebre, and exposed the current regime (as if more were needed) as increasingly repressive, corrupt and vicious.
Pussy Riot Global Day (Photo credit: Eyes on Rights)
Related articles
