Kremlin sows hate with harsh Pussy Riot verdict

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/commentary-on-verdict-in-pussy-riot-trial-a-850696.html

The three members of Pussy Riot on trial in Moscow have received sentences of two years in jail. With the harsh verdict on the harmless artists, Russian President Vladimir Putin has committed a serious mistake: He is provoking the opposition to more aggression toward the state.

The outcome was exactly what had been feared. On Friday, a Moscow district court found three members of the punk band Pussy Riot guilty. They were each sentenced to two years in prison. It was a verdict that surely would not have been delivered against the will of President Vladimir Putin.

The public debate in Russia over the handling of the three musicians – Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Maria Alyokhina — was passionate and controversial. Writers, artists and intellectuals expressed their solidarity with the defendants.

The trial drew no shortage of criticism on the uncensored radio station Echo Moskvy, which is sympathetic to the opposition, and other radio stations, as well as in daily and weekly newspapers. The debate was a far cry from what would have been the case in a totalitarian society. Compared to the Soviet Union of the 1980s, a state without freedom of speech or freedom of travel, today’s Russia has come a long way.

That, however, is little consolation in the light of current events in Moscow. Russia’s powerful seem to be unaware of the degree to which the politicized trial of Pussy Riot is a symptom of the deep crisis that currently afflicts Russian society.

It was inevitable that the stunt by the punk band in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior would provoke objections. By entering the altar space and insulting the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church as a “suka” (“bitch”) in their song, the band hurt the feelings of many believers.

The performance, with its “blasphemous words which insult Christians,” had deeply shocked “the faithful of all religious communities,” read a statement by the Interreligious Council of Russia, which was also signed by the Federation of Jewish Communities.

Some Orthodox Christians also separately called for the activists to be severely punished. One arch-abbot even went so far as to write, in a Moscow weekly paper, that “the country will go under if you do not punish profanity.”

The court has now ruled that the three women had been “motivated by religious enmity and hatred.” But those in power seem not to understand that the Church and state are doing themselves a disservice by locking up the three young women, two of whom are mothers of small children.

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not sure about this group of ladies..and i certainly dont understand how they can be jailed for singing songs..i thought russia was secular? there maybe other elements at play here..

401

~ by seeker401 on August 21, 2012.