RU - Putin foes, feminist punk band Pussy Riot, jailed for 6 months after protest

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Pussy Riot jailed for six more months (Guardian)
Putin crackdown on Russian dissent highlighted by case of feminist
band arrested in March for performing 'punk prayer' in church

A Moscow judge has ordered three members of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot to spend the next six months in jail, prolonging a case that has highlighted the crackdown on freedom of expression in Vladimir Putin's Russia.

The three women – Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Maria Alekhina – were remanded in custody until January 2013. Their supporters say the powerful Orthodox church, which has close links with Putin, is behind the drive to keep the women in jail.
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Pussy Riot erupted on the scene amid a wave of protest over Putin's re-election as president. With bright balaclavas, rabid punk anthems and explicitly anti-government lyrics, they helped enliven Russia's growing urban protest movement.
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more at link above
 
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose!
 
[video=youtube;ALS92big4TY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALS92big4TY[/video]
 
I really like the song. They also perhaps have listened to proto-feminist punk band Kleenex/LiLiPUT, a key influence on the Riot Grrrl ethos.
 
The brilliant British playwright, Caryl Churchill, wrote a play 20 years ago called Mad Forest. It deals with events in Romania after Ceausescu, but could be applied to Russia as well.

Basically it argues that the same thugs who ruled Communist dictatorships before 1989 spent the ensuing years re-consolidating their power and establishing new dictatorships under the pretense of democracy. (Ceausescu and his wife were executed, of course, but his henchmen merely took over in his stead.)
 
Hopefully when they're sprung they can go on tour with the Buzzcocks.
 
Prosecuted Russian punk band Pussy Riot says ‘Putin is scared of us’

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/07/...k-band-pussy-riot-says-putin-is-scared-of-us/

Giving their first video interview to the western media, three other members of the band, who have been in hiding since the arrests, said that, while it was “scary” knowing that the authorities could come after them too, they had also shown that “Putin is scared of us” and is “afraid of people”.
 
3 members of Russian band Pussy Riot plead not guilty to hooliganism

http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/30/world/europe/russia-pussy-riot-trial/index.html?iref=allsearch

John Dalhuisen of Amnesty said the singers had been making "a legitimate protest -- this is not a criminal offense. They must be released immediately."

"They dared to attack the two pillars of modern Russian establishment -- the Kremlin and the Orthodox Church. While many may have found their act offensive, the sentence of up to seven years in prison they may expect on the charges of hooliganism is wildly out of all proportion," he said.
 
Making Punk a Threat Again (foreignpolicy.com)
Pussy Riot is -- to borrow the Clash's mantle for a second -- the only band that matters.

It almost doesn't matter what the court says. The three women of Pussy Riot -- an explosive, obnoxious cross between a band and an anonymous Russian dissidents' movement -- have, in an important sense, already won their farce of a trial in Moscow.

Every day that their trial for "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" continues, they call international attention to the paranoid repression of Vladimir Putin's Russia.
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the rest at the link above; the Clash cannot be said to have "basically started punk rock," but it's a good article anyways

You say you want a revolution: five other bands that have managed to upset regimes and dictators (Foreign Policy)
 
Pussy Riot trial like the Inquisition, says Mikhail Khodorkovsky

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/aug/06/pussy-riot-trial-inquisition-khodorkovsky?newsfeed=true

The trial showed that Russians have been "deprived of an honest and independent judiciary, of the opportunity to defend ourselves and to protect people from lawlessness", he wrote in a statement published on his defence team's website on Monday.

"The word 'trial' is applicable here only in the sense in which it was used by the inquisitors of the middle ages," he said.
 
Pussy Riot Make Final Pleas in Moscow Court
Jailed feminist punks await verdict for controversial church performance


Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/n...-pleas-in-moscow-court-20120808#ixzz22zSQgI00

Their verdict is set for next Friday, August 17th.

Defense lawyers expect a guilty verdict for Pussy Riot. While prosecutors have requested three years in prison for each band member – less than the maximum seven years – the defense is hoping for a more lenient punishment. They have announced plans for a world-wide rally to support Pussy Riot on the day of the verdict.
 
I'm so glad I Stumbled across this thread.

We were on a college visit at FSU a few weeks ago and saw a hand lettered sign in the Union Green that said "Free Pussy Riot.". We all just looked at each other and shrugged, but I did say, "I hope that's the name of a band."

CrAzY!!!
 

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