Last weekend I posted the story about the Russian punk band Pussy Riot and the trouble they were having with the Putin run country…….
Pussy Riot took on two powerful state institutions at once when they burst into Moscow’s golden-domed Christ the Saviour Cathedral wearing bright ski masks, tights and short skirts to protest against Putin’s close ties with the Church.
The judge said the three women had “committed an act of hooliganism, a gross violation of public order showing obvious disrespect for society.” She rejected their argument that they had no intention of offending Russian Orthodox believers.
It became one of Russia’s most high-profile trials since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and Putin’s critics said it put the 59-year-old Kremlin leader’s policies in the dock.
Opponents depicted it as part of a crackdown by the ex-KGB spy against a protest movement that took off over the winter, attracting what witnesses said were crowds of up to 100,000 people in Moscow to oppose his return to power.
And now for the bad news……
A judge sentenced three members of Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot to two years jail on Friday for staging a protest against President Vladimir Putin in a church, an act the judge called “blasphemous”.
Supporters of the women say their case has put Putin’s tolerance of dissent on trial. Several opposition figures were detained outside the courtroom while protesting in support of the women.
The women have support abroad, where their case has been taken up by a long list of celebrities including Madonna, Paul McCartney and Sting, but polls show few Russians sympathize with them.
Judge Marina Syrova found the women guilty of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred, describing them as blasphemers who had deliberately offended Russian Orthodox believers by storming the altar of Moscow’s main cathedral in February to belt out a song deriding Putin.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, Marina Alyokhina, 24, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, stood watching in handcuffs in a glass courtroom cage.
Now the question is how will the rest of the world react……..and if there are still “gulags” these women are so screwed……thoughts?