Moscow punks compare trial to Stalin repressions
Lawyers are calling for international protest
Yesterday in Moscow a lead singer of Pussy Riot compared the punk group’s trial to Stalin-era repression in a dramatic finale to the hearing pitting the three women against the might of both Kremlin and Church.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova spoke hours after pop star Madonna and the artist and widow of John Lennon, Yoko Ono, joined calls for President Vladimir Putin to show mercy on his young and effectively powerless critics.
Prosecutors want the three to be sentenced to three years in a corrective labour facility on charges of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred after they performed a “punk prayer” against Mr Putin in Moscow’s largest church.
Judge Marina Syrova will start reading her verdict on August 17 after eight days of deliberations following a trial where she barred most of the defence witnesses from testifying.
The women’s lawyers have called for an international protest on the day of the verdict.
Speaking from inside the glass enclosure reserved for the defendants throughout the trial, Tolokonnikova compared the hearings to “troikas” – a powerful Russian term referring to tribunals the Soviet dictator used for his bloody purges. “We see this as a political order for repressions,” she added in a hushed courtroom packed with journalists and supporters.
The controversial case prompted Madonna to interrupt a stadium concert in Moscow on Tuesday to tell the cheering crowd that she was praying for the band members’ freedom.
Ono for her part tweeted a message to Mr Putin telling him he was making a mistake.
“Mr Putin you are a wise man & don’t need to fight with musicians & their friends,” she wrote.
Tolokonnikova and her bandmates Yekaterina Samutsevich and Maria Alyokhina pulled on brightly-coloured balaclavas inside Christ the Saviour Cathedral on February 21 and belted out a song asking the Virgin Mary to oust Putin.
“Virgin Mary, Mother of God, drive out Putin,” the trio sang in a punk anthem that condemned “the Church’s praise of rotten dictators” and urged religious leaders to embrace feminist values.
Putin broke months of silence last week by saying that he did not like the band’s behaviour but did not want them “judged too severely.”