Pussy Riot v Vladimir Putin
Free Pussy Riot supporter in Barcelona
A man dies from a tumour, so how can a country survive with growths like labour camps and exiles? — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The outrage across the world has been nothing short of phenomenal!
On Friday, three members of the feminist punk group Pussy Riot were sentenced in a Stalin-era show trial to two years in prison for staging a peaceful protest against Russian President Vladimir Putin inside an Orthodox church. A judge rejected the argument their act was a form of political protest, instead ruling it was motivated by religious hatred. As the verdict came down Friday, solidarity protests took place in more than 60 cities around the world marking Global Pussy Riot Day.
The Pussy Riot case was seen as a key test of how far Putin would go to crackdown on dissidents during his third stint as president.
What message does it send to the world when the three young women are held in chains, in a cage with bars, then a glass cage, in court for 12 hours a day, not allowed breaks to go to the toilet or to eat, back to prison for five hours, but not to sleep as the only time to prepare their case.
Two years in a penal colony, a slave labour camp, for singing a protest song.
Imprisoned and persecuted writers have PEN, we now need something similar for musicians.
Has nothing changed in Russia since Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote Cancer Ward and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich?
Is the Kremlin so corrupt and rotten that Pussy Riot brings it crumbling to the ground?
Russia has a collapsing economy. It needed oil at $40 a barrel, it now needs oil at $150 a barrel. Investors will avoid Russia like the plague.
Reagan bankrupted the Soviet Union by forcing an arms race it could not afford and dragging into a war in Afghanistan it could not sustain. Vladimir Putin is now bankrupting Russia by making promises he cannot honour and presiding of a kleptocracy that is robbing the country.
Vladimir Putin is turning Russia into a pariah state. He has backed Assad in the slaughter of the Syrian people, now he is persecuting Pussy Riot for singing a protest song.
Please sign the global petitions in support of Pussy Riot:
http://www.allout.org/en/actions/russianriot
We are all Pussy Riot. You cannot kill an idea.
- First They Came For The Communists
- Tell Russia To Release Pussy Riot!
- Pussy Riot is just the start of the fight for free speech in Russia
- The true blasphemy: Slavoj Žižek on Pussy Riot
- After Pussy Riot, artists everywhere must stand up for each other
- Russian police searching for 2 more Pussy Riot members
- Pussy Riot copycats booted from German cathedral (VIDEO)
- Stephen Fry publishes two-page open letter of support for jailed Pussy Riot members
- Reading the Riot Act
- Punk Band Pussy Riot Crashes Investment Case
- Strummer of Love – Free Pussy Riot – BAND PETITION
- Support for «Pussy Riot» from Latvia
- We Are All Pussy Riot, We Are All Waiting To Happen
- The Priest Who Beat Pussy Riot: The Orthodox Point Man with the Kremlin
Tags: democracy, free pussy riot, human rights, music, protest, punk, Russia, Vladimir Putin
