Celebrities lead protests as judge sentences singers for staging their action against President Putin in church... but few Russians have sympathy for their cause
Three members of the Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years in jail yesterday for staging a protest against President Vladimir Putin in a cathedral.
The judge called the act “blasphemous”.
And now supporters across the world say their case has put Mr Putin’s tolerance of dissent on trial.
As the three singers were led away, several opposition members protesting about the case were detained outside the courtroom.
The women’s case has been taken up by a long list of celebrities including Madonna, Paul McCartney and Sting but polls show few Russians sympathise with them.
Judge Marina Syrova found the women guilty of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred, describing them as blasphemers.
They had had deliberately offended Russian Orthodox believers by storming the altar of Moscow’s main cathedral in February to belt out a song deriding Mr Putin, Judge Syrova added.
The band members – Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, Marina Alyokhina, 24, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30 – stood watching in handcuffs locked in a glass courtroom cage.
They say they were protesting against Mr Putin’s close ties with the Church when they burst onto the altar in Moscow’s golden-domed Christ the Saviour Cathedral, wearing bright ski masks, tights and short skirts.
For their actions, state prosecutors had requested a three-year jail term.
“Tolokonnikova, Samutsevich and Alyokhina committed an act of hooliganism, a gross violation of public order showing obvious disrespect for society,” the judge said.
“Their actions were sacrilegious, blasphemous and broke the Church’s rules.”
Though few Russians have much sympathy for the women, Mr Putin’s opponents portray the trial as part of a wider crackdown by the former KGB spy to crush their protest movement.
“As in most politically motivated cases, this court is not in line with the law, common sense or mercy,” veteran human rights campaigner Lyudmila Alexeyeva said.
But Valentina Ivanova, 60, a retired doctor, said outside the courtroom before the verdict was delivered: “What they did showed disrespect towards everything, and towards believers first of all.
“Let them go to jail, they need to wise up.”
The trial has divided Russia’s mainly Orthodox Christian society, with many backing the authorities’ demands for severe punishment, but others saying the women deserved clemency.
Mr Putin, who returned to the presidency for a third term in May after a four-year spell as Prime Minister, has said the women did “nothing good” but should not be judged too harshly.
At least 24 people were detained by police in scuffles or for unfurling banners or donning balaclavas in support of Pussy Riot outside the courtroom.
Among those detained were Sergei Udaltsov, a leftist opposition leader, and Garry Kasparov, the chess legend and vehement Putin critic.
“Shame on Putin,” Mr Udaltsov said before he was detained.
“A disgraceful political reprisal is underway on the part of the authorities. If we swallow this injustice they can come for any one of us tomorrow.”
The crowd of about 2,000 people outside the court was dominated by Pussy Riot supporters but also included some nationalists and religious believers demanding a tough sentence.
“Evil must be punished,” said Maria Butilno, 60, who held an icon and said Pussy Riot had insulted the faithful.
An opinion poll of Russians released by the independent Levada research group yesterday showed only six per cent had sympathy with the women.
And some 51 per cent said they found nothing good about them or felt irritation or hostility, and the rest were unable to say or were indifferent.
“The girls went too far, but they should be fined and released,” said Alexei, a 30-year-old engineer on a Moscow street near the court. He declined to give his family name.
Tolokonnikova, Alyokhina and Samutsevich are educated, middle-class Russians who say their protest was intended to highlight close ties between the Russian Orthodox Church and Mr Putin, not to offend believers.
The charges against Pussy Riot raised concern abroad about freedom of speech in Russia two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Protests in support of the group were planned in cities from Sydney to Paris and New York to London.
A crowd of several hundred gathered in a New York hotel late on Thursday to hear actress Chloe Sevigny and others read from letters, lyrics and court statements by the detained women.
In Kiev, a bare-chested feminist activist took a chainsaw to a wooden cross bearing a the figure of Christ.
In Bulgaria, sympathisers put Pussy Riot-style masks on statues at a Soviet Army monument.
Protest leaders say Mr Putin will not relax pressure on opponents in his new six-year term.
In moves seen by the opposition as a crackdown, Parliament has rushed through laws increasing fines for protesters, tightening controls on the internet, which is used to arrange protests, and imposing stricter rules on defamation.
The punk protesters
“The philosopher”
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22. With her dark, bobbed hair, big eyes and full lips, her photogenic appearance has made her the face of Pussy Riot in the Western media.
She has been the focus of attention in the Russian media before. Many newspapers have featured pictures of her having public sex with her husband while she was pregnant in 2008.
The event, staged with other couples at Moscow’s Zoological Museum, was intended as a provocative protest against the election to the presidency of Mr Putin’s protégé Dmitry Medvedev.
Ms Tolokonnikova was in her final year of philosophy studies at the prestigious Moscow State University when she was arrested. Her daughter is now aged four.
Court officials have tried to portray her as a bad influence on the other women, asking witnesses how the others’ behaviour had changed after they met her.
“The artist”
Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, who studied art and is an avid reader of philosophy, kept a low profile throughout the court proceedings, breaking her silence only to give long, thoughtful responses to the judge’s questions.
She graduated top of her class at Moscow’s well-regarded Rodchenko School of Photography and Multimedia. It was during her time as a student that she met Ms Tolokonnikova.
Before she was arrested and jailed in March, Ms Samutsevich lived with her father, Stanislav, who has appeared repeatedly at the courtroom proceedings. He has told lawyers that he brought her up in accordance with Russian traditions.
Ms Samutsevich has given some of the clearest accounts as to why the Church was chosen as a target in their protest, saying: “Christ the Saviour Cathedral had become a significant symbol in the political strategy of the authorities.”
She has spent time in prison reading works by Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek and French thinker Michel Foucault.
“The writer”
Maria Alyokhina, 24, a fourth-year student at the Institute of Journalism and Creative Writing in Moscow and has a background in humanitarian volunteering and environmental activism with Greenpeace Russia.
Her five-year-old son has been looked after by relatives during her time in pre-trial detention.
Ms Alyokhina was often vocal during the women’s trial, at times arguing with the judge and cross-examining witnesses.
She has said she considers herself a Christian but has criticised the Orthodox Church for its harsh response to the protest in the cathedral.
“I thought the Church loved all its children,” she said. “But it seems the Church loves only those children who believe in Putin.”
Her mother has been quoted saying she brings Ms Alyokhina, a vegetarian, fruit and nuts to keep her going in jail.