Russian girl punks Pussy Riot have gained a great deal of media coverage following their brave stand against the autocratic Putin regime. But the group are also important because of their explicit support for LGBT rights.
Maria Alyokhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Yekaterina Samutsevich were arrested following an unannounced Pussy Riot appearance in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, the city’s main Orthodox church. The group performed a “punk prayer”, that criticised Vladimir Putin: the man who has continuously served as either Russia’s President or Prime Minister since 1999.
With their trial drawing to a close, the three women are now likely to face up to three years in jail for the crime of “hooliganism”: a charge Amnesty International describe as “politically motivated”. The verdict will be announced on Friday 17th August.
Commentators from around the world have praised Pussy Riot for supporting freedom of speech, political transparency and women’s rights. But it should also be noted that the group are outspoken LGBT rights advocates: a brave move even for this feminist direct action group.
LGBT people in Russia currently face significant challenges. A 2005 poll indicated that 43.5% of the country’s population supported the re-criminalisation of “homosexual acts”. Several regions have outlawed the “promotion” of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex rights: for instance, the city of St Petersburg has banned “public action aimed at propagandising sodomy, lesbianism, bisexualism, and transgenderism among minors” in a chilling echo of Section 28.
In Moscow, Pride marches have come under attack from thugs (including the police) for several years. Pride parades have now been banned in the city for the coming century.
It is against this backdrop that Pussy Riot members have explained that the LGBT rights agenda is important to them in interviews and in song:
“Black robe, golden epaulettes /
All parishioners are crawling and bowing /
The ghost of freedom is in heaven /
Gay pride sent to Siberia in chains“The fact that Pussy Riot targeted the Orthodox Church in their most recent protest is also of consequence. They did so to highlight the dangerous extent to which the interests of the Church are intertwined with those of the Russian authorities. This relationship is manifested in part through officially sanctioned sexism and homophobia. It can be seen in homophobic laws backed by the Church, and in tacit support from the authorities for homophobic violence dished out by religious extremists.
Alexei Mukhin, president of political thinktank the Center for Political Information, argues that Pussy Riot “were contracted to stage their recent action in the Christ the Savior Cathedral by the LGBT community”. Mukhin’s assessment is pretty cynical and almost definitely inaccurate, but it’s easy to see how he made the connection.
Many within Russia and elsewhere have argued that the cathedral protest was a step too far: an unnecessary infringement upon religious freedoms by a group keen to gain attention for their wider political battle. It’s also important to remember that plenty of feminists, LGBT people and political activists are religious, and that an attack upon religion can be seen as an attack upon these groups.
But for Pussy Riot, the Orthodox Church as an institution was a viable target, in the same way that the Church of England was a viable target for Outrage! in the 1990s. Both the Russian government and the Church have caused suffering for countless lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people, and this must be opposed.
Information on how you can support Pussy Riot can be found at Free Pussy Riot! and Amnesty International.
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French demonstrators protesting against the jailing of Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot have been arrested - because of the country's controversial 'niqab' law. Several of the 30 demonstrators in Marseille, marching outside the Russian consulate, wore the trademark luminous balaclavas which the members of the punk band wore whilst performing their "punk prayer" at Moscow's cathedral.
The heritage of protest and provocation on which Nadezhda Tolokonnikova was drawing was confirmed as soon as I saw her picture. The hair cut into a functional bob, the "No Pasaran" T‑shirt with the clenched-fist logo, her leading place in a band-cum-collective called Pussy Riot - it was as if she had been plucked from the Anglo-American subculture known as riot grrrl circa 1992, and dropped into modern Russia.
On August 8th, the three members of Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot delivered their closing statements at the Moscow Khamovniki District Court. Charged with "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred," Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova were first arrested on March 3, a day before the controversial re-election of Vladimir Putin.
video by Guardian
Pussy Riot release new single Putin Lights Up the Fires - video Exclusive: Pussy Riot, the feminist Russian punk band from which three members were found guilty of hooliganism driven by religious hatred and sentenced to two years in jail, have released a new single called Putin Lights Up the Fires.
The MYPLACE. research team at HSE St Petersburg in Russia send this blog on the latest developments following “Pussy Riot’s” imprisonment for their punk protest, as reported on this blog in March.
For more information on the MYPLACE project, visit the project’s website: HERE
The headline-making case of 2012 is going to the end. The lawyers of the three young women accused were convinced that the trial would begin soon and they were not mistaken, basically – a hearing is scheduled for July, 20. Probably, the situation was provoked by the letter signed by 200 masters of Russian culture, headed to the Supreme Court asking to free the girls http://pussy-riot.livejournal.com/27740.html
One needs to mention that the defendants did not have time to familiarize themselves with the investigation because they were not given enough time to do so. However, this is not the worst thing in the situation. Neither the fact that the court extended the time of the girls’ arrest several times, and they went on a hunger strike in response. It is not so terrible even to hear the maximum sentence of seven years, to which everyone is used to – because they were talking about it right from the first day of the commitment.
The thing that really sounds terrible is the accusation itself confirmed by the prosecution. It is reported that Pussy Riot «caused significant damage to the sacred values of the Christian church and encroached on the sacramental mystery of the church, having humiliated secular foundations of the Russian Orthodox Church in an aweless way.”
In Pussy Riot’s blog there are some documents. Among them – that very scanned copy of the indictment. Lines in red appeal to the rules adopted by church councils during the IV and VII centuries that the investigator uses as arguments proving the guilt of the girls http://pussy-riot.livejournal.com/27607.html
The girls’ lawyers are right: the accusation is not based on the canons of the Criminal Code asthere are no such terms in it. This is the lexicon of the church documents. And how rational is it to follow the laws and regulations of religious institutions in the XXI century in secular state courts? The accusation was the last straw that forced the lawyers to appeal to international legal authorities http://freepussyriot.org/
The complaint to the Strasbourg Court has already passed the first formal stage, it was assigned a number and it will be considered in a priority order. Pussy Riot’s case should also be considered in the Committee of the UN Human Rights – a letter to Ban Ki-moon has already been compiled and sent to international human rights activists, who repeatedly offered assistance to the girls through their lawyers.
Experts believe that Pussy Riot’s verdict may concern the actual terms of imprisonment. Of course, not seven years but three years of the colony – completely. It is also possible that the girls will be sentenced to the term they had already served to release them in the courtroom. In any case, the sentence must be rigid and create a precedent for the future.
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The MYPLACE blog first reported on ”Pussy Riot’s” anti-Putin punk prayer protest, in March. Now, as 3 members of the group have been sentenced to 2 years imprisonment for “hooliganism,” the University of Warwick’s Dr Ivan Gololobov writes on the scene in Moscow which forms the background to Pussy Riot’s rise to infamy.
For more information on the MYPLACE project, visit the project’s website: HERE
In the last few months a lot of media attention in Russia and abroad was drawn to the trial over three members of the feminist punk-band Pussy Riot arrested and charged with hooliganism for their performance ‘Punk-prayer’ that took place inside of the Christ the Saviour, the biggest Orthodox cathedral in Russia on the 21st of February 2012. Musicians all over the world from Madonna, Paul McCartney and Peter Gabriel, to Bjork, Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Faith no More expressed their clear disagreement with the proposed sentence and showed their support to the arrested girls. Russian musicians, however, expressed surprisingly little interest to this affair. And if the silence of pop and rock stars whose careers vitally depend on good relations with the authorities is more than understandable, the absence of vocal response from underground musicians looks pretty strange.
It would be wrong to say that such reaction is completely absent, but interestingly enough it comes from rather unexpected corners of the scene. The first song produced in support to Pussy Riot was recorded by a well-known rapper Siava, famous for his colourful portraits of yobs’ life. The song was called Maliava Pussy Riot [A prison letter to Pussy Riot], it was released in April 2012 shortly after the arrest.
Rapper Siava, Maliava Pussy Riot
“Aha, yau. And wazzap? And what’s wrong?
They say that Pussy’s sense of decency has gone
From Twitter to LJ, from Facebook to Vkontakte
There a lot of info on the blasphemous actThe girls have come around, have prayed and left the place
And probably by this they crossed their ways with Faith
Fairy tales are produced, authorities are abused
The skies are getting smaller, the cells are getting closer
Let them know for once because it is too much
Why are they criticising Putin in the Church?
So that is how it is, how people are locked in
When on a modern rhythm they are producing hymnAh-ah, Pussy Riot
Behind the bars, you will be sent by trial
To make your exile slightly better
We are sending you a music letterI don’t understand, and I can’t really say
Can I be put in prison just because I pray?
Is it seven years to sit for how they behaved?
Why are you dragging down with this my beloved state?
What a bad company, what a blasphemy -
When the girls are singing against kingdom of devil?
This is a simple letter of Siava to the cell
The girls have touched the evil so the evil is making hell
Bad luck for them the evil is on their bid
But let never put down the justice which they lit
Take Pussy Riot these salutes from us, from Perm’
Everything is gonna be alright, whichever way you turn.”Since then, no one really added to this single voice until in August 2012 Elizium, an emo-core band from Nizhniy Novgorod came forward with the slogans of support to Pussy Riot on Kubana, the biggest open-air festival Kubana in the South of Russia, and BARTO, a feminist electro-punk band from Moscow recorded a track called Kis’ia eres’ [Heresy of little cats]
The silence of the Russian music underground, and what is more surprising – punk scene is, however, not that unpredictable. As a matter of fact Pussy Riot, although calling themselves a punk-band and using the sign of punk in their performances, never belonged to the Russian punk scene. They consider themselves as art-actionists, clearly place themselves in the context of contemporary Russian actionism, quoting the names of Prigov, Brener, Kulik and other art-provocateurs of the 1990s.
From the very beginning Pussy Riot was an art-project and their personal connection to the famous art-group Voina is not an accident in this regard. Ideology and actions of Pussy Riot are clearly oriented towards media reaction. The songs which appear in the internet are pre-recorded in studio, their actions are pre-rehearsed and sometimes include several takes, like the one in the Christ the Saviour, where footage from an identical action in a smaller church performed earlier was mixed in the main clip. This is, somehow, not particularly punky. In the same way as it is not particularly punky to stage a gig and to play without any audience, just for the cameras, portraying it later as a ‘concert’.
The punk-prayer is not over, it is being written now, and its after-effect appears to be much more important than the performance itself. Performance itself was not that interesting and, moreover, many found it appalling, but what happened next is by far much more appalling. This however made Russian music underground silent as it did not find the ways of reacting on this performance which appeared to be much more real than any ‘real’ punk concert, ironically suggesting that probably the only true rock and punk musician in Russia appeared to be rapper Siava, previously known for his hit Bodriachkom, patsanchiki [Get on the way, lads], caution, explicit lyrics!!!
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