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Vol. 80/No. 8 February 29, 2016
Pussy Riot on US tour: ‘Keep
an eye on your democracy’
BY EDWIN FRUIT
SEATTLE — A program featuring two members of Pussy Riot, Maria Alyokhina
and Ksenia Zhivago, attracted several hundred people here Feb. 8. The
event is part of a multicity U.S. tour of the Russian political punk
rock collective, which opposes Moscow’s anti-working-class course at
home and abroad.
The tour coincides with the release of a new Pussy Riot video entitled
“Chaika,” which portrays the brutality of the Putin regime and ridicules
Russia’s Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika.
The program included excerpts from the documentary “Pussy vs. Putin,”
comments by Alyokhina and Zhivago and discussion.
Alyokhina said that Pussy Riot formed in 2011 in response to the
deteriorating economic conditions in Russia and the erosion of
democratic rights under President Vladimir Putin. After she and fellow
Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova carried out a punk performance
mocking Putin in a Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow, they were framed
up and sentenced to penal colonies.
The penal code in Russia keeps getting expanded so that more people the
regime considers opponents are sentenced to prison for minor
infractions, Alyokhina said. And the majority of women in the penal
colonies are there because of drug convictions or for having responded
in self-defense against spousal abuse.
Alyokhina stayed politically active while imprisoned. Eight abusive
guards were dismissed because of complaints that she and others raised,
she said. Pussy Riot is now involved in a project to help prisoners
obtain medicine, protest violations of their rights and obtain legal
counsel.
She gave several examples of attacks on political and democratic rights
in Russia: the sentencing of Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov by a
Russian military court in Crimea to 20 years; the destruction by
hoodlums of art exhibits they consider offensive to the Orthodox Church;
and the assassination in February 2015 of Boris Nemtsov, an opponent of
Putin, while he was walking across a bridge in Moscow. Alyokhina said
that activists maintain a 24-hour vigil there and are calling for the
bridge to be renamed in his honor.
Democratic rights are not under attack only in Russia, she said. She
told the audience, “Keep an eye on your democracy. It can happen here as
well.”
Alyokhina was asked if it was true that over 80 percent of the Russian
people support Putin. If you believe that, she said tongue-in-cheek, you
also believe that 101 percent of the people supported Stalin.
Alyokhina said that she had visited the Maidan protests in Kiev,
Ukraine, during the uprising there and had joined a march in Moscow
opposing the Russian takeover of Crimea.
“There are no borders between us,” she said. People around the world
“need to keep connecting with each other.”
The video stars Tolokonnikova as a female version of Chaika. Opposition
figure Alexei Navalny has released a documentary accusing the prosecutor
of corruption, torture and ordering the death of political opponents.
“Be loyal to those in power, because power is a gift from God, son. I
love Russia. I’m a patriot,” she raps, a statement by Chaika in response
to the corruption allegations.
She also raps a description of how “justice” works in Russia. “First the
cops will pull you in for questioning. Then it’ll look like an accident.
You’ll be fed to the fish.” The video is on YouTube with English subtitles.
Upcoming cities on the tour include Chicago, Feb. 21; New York, Feb. 22;
and Washington, D.C., Feb. 23.
Related articles:
UK students debate ‘political correctness,’ free speech
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