Last week, Russian authorities handed down a harsh sentance to the three members of the female punk band Pussy Riot, after the band staged an anti-Putin “punk prayer” in a Russian Orthodox Church. It shows the increasingly autocratic ways of Russian prime minister Vladmir Putin, who is apparently leading the country away from its experiments as an open society (while lining his own pockets at the same time).
Below is a statement from one of the band members which was posted to one of the band’s support groups on Facebook. She is absolutely correct when she writes that the country’s heavy-handed response to their stunt shows the Russian leadership’s fear of opposition.
I hope their case will wake other Russians to Putin’s looting of their country and their rights.
Nikolay Polozov:
The letter of Maria Alekhina about how they were taken away from the court.
English translation:
Right after the reading of the verdict, we were taken to the cells, accompanied by guards with dogs. After a few minutes my guard asked for an excerpt from the verdict. A few minutes after that, a special forces cop burst into my cell and started swearing at me, telling me to get my things together. Evidently I wasn’t fast enough, and he started twisting my arms. This was very strange, because in the past we were generally treated less roughly. So there must have been special instructions. The rest of the procedure went like this: we were loaded onboard a bus full of these special forces types and then, accompanied by numerous police vehicles, including two other buses full of armed police, were driven halfway across Moscow in a “corridor” specially cleared through the dense traffic. What is the meaning of all this? Even terrorists and heavy criminals aren’t given this kind of special convoy treatment. Doing so for three girls is a clear sign of FEAR. The depth of this fear came as a surprise. It would be nice to think that it will all end happily, but these events would seem to indicate otherwise.
20.08.2012
(M. Alekhina)