Pussy Riot singers freed under new Russian amnesty law just in time for Sochi

Pussy Riot, the all-female Russian punk band, saw two of its members jailed last year following their now-famous “punk prayer” in Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral. A new amnesty law, which comes conveniently before the February start date of the Winter Olympics being held in Sochi, Russia, freed bandmates Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova just […]

Protestors at a rally for Pussy Riot in 2012 - photo courtesy Eyes on Rights Humanitarian Photography via Flickr (http://bit.ly/1d4ckWH)
Protestors at a rally for Pussy Riot in 2012 - photo courtesy Eyes on Rights Humanitarian Photography via Flickr (http://bit.ly/1d4ckWH)

Protestors at a rally for Pussy Riot in 2012 – photo courtesy Eyes on Rights Humanitarian Photography via Flickr (http://bit.ly/1d4ckWH)

Pussy Riot, the all-female Russian punk band, saw two of its members jailed last year following their now-famous “punk prayer” in Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral. A new amnesty law, which comes conveniently before the February start date of the Winter Olympics being held in Sochi, Russia, freed bandmates Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova just this week.

Pussy Riot is outspoken in its support of feminism and LGBT rights, two positions (of many) that don’t make them too popular with the Russian Orthodox Church. From the Los Angeles Times


“The Moscow Patriarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church expressed satisfaction with the amnesty and offered a gesture of conciliation.

‘We are happy they were released and although we denounced their blasphemous act, we never insisted that they should have been put in prison to begin with, but it is the way the law is,’ Vladimir Vigilyansky, spokesman for the Moscow Patriarchy, said in an interview. ‘The doors of our church are always open for them, and should they make a step toward the church, we are ready to make 100 steps toward them.'”

The “punk prayer” took place in February 2012, and involved five members of Pussy Riot. They sang a song called “Mother of God Drive Putin Away,” and called it a moleben, or prayer of supplication to God usually led by a priest. The leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Kirill I, endorsed Putin in his 2012 campaign for re-election, which made him a target for the members of Pussy Riot for whom Putin represented everything wrong with Russia, “a man who is as far as can be from God’s truth.”

Members of the band had a different take. “You cannot believe in an earthly tsar if his deeds contradict those values for which the Heavenly Tsar was crucified,” the group wrote in a blog post last year. The amnesty law may be a step in the right direction for Putin’s administration, although its effectiveness has yet to be proved. Of 23,000 prisoners eligible for release under the new law, only 1,000 are set to be freed.

In a phone interview with the New York Times, Maria Alyokhina said she was forced out of prison in Nizhny Novgorod by guards and would have preferred to finish her sentence rather than receiving “mercy” from President Vladimir Putin.

“I think this is an attempt to improve the image of the current government, a little, before the Sochi Olympics — particularly for the Western Europeans,” Alyokhina told the Times


Putin has come under fire from the international community for his country’s legislation against the distribution of material promoting “non-traditional” sexual relationships or make homosexuality “seem attractive.” This has led to calls for a boycott of the Sochi Olympics by people like Lady Gaga and actor Stephen Fry, as well other activists and athletes. German President Joachim Gauck, a former Lutheran pastor, has become the first political figure to boycott the games, causing a row with German Prime Minister Angela Merkel, who is part of a group of politicians who believe Russia is better dealt with in conversation than absence. President Obama will not be attending the Sochi Olympics, sending in his place a delegation of athletes from the United States, including former tennis pro Billie Jean King and figure skater Brian Boitano, both members of the LGBT community.

It is a lucky coincidence, at best, that this amnesty law–which also frees members of Greenpeace who were arrested earlier this year–was passed at the height of Russia’s PR crisis before Sochi. More likely, it was meant as a diversion tactic, a small gesture of goodwill from a country still under the oppressive regime of an administration dedicated to order, at any cost.

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