Yesterday’s sentencing of female Russian punk/performance group Pussy Riot to a two year jail sentence for supposed ‘felony hooliganism,’ says a lot about how Russian authorities view females and what their role in society should be. In short it’s a complete indictment on women in the region and is set to re deposit the region in a wrath of condensation akin to that of earlier centuries ago. Not a pleasant outcome considering how far women have come along in asserting their rights, but then again who ever said us men had to respect what women felt, thought or desired outside of domestic day to day activities?
bbc.co.uk: There is almost universal condemnation in the press worldwide of the two-year sentences imposed on members of Russian punk group Pussy Riot. In Russia itself, many mention the Dark Ages and one commentator calls the verdict “Bolshevist”.
A French editorial calls the trial “a travesty of justice” and the Washington Post says the sentence is excessive.
But a newspaper in Belarus argues that the authorities have done Pussy Riot a favour by making them more popular.
The sentencing comes pursuant to the group staging a protest questioning President Putin’s policies towards women inside Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior on February 21st.
dailybeast: The cathedral had been virtually empty during the morning hours, and the protest lasted all of 40 seconds before the women were removed by security. But church staff members testified during the trial that they were deeply traumatized by observing the young women in brightly colored dresses and balaclavas lip-sync to a recording of what Pussy Riot calls its punk prayer: “Mother of God, cast Putin out.”
And then there’s this, which raises the question by supporting an archaic disposition courtesy of the church, are Russian authorities cynically using the church to assert constricted notions as to how it views or desires to see political and human rights reform to follow? Or to put it another way do authorities really believe such sentencing will temper the desire for individual autonomy and transparency between church, state and the elitists who wish to subjugate the individual to their dogma and path to profits? :
The fact is, the church is promoting a very conservative worldview that does not fit into such values as freedom of choice, the formation of political identity, gender identity, or sexual identity, critical thinking, multiculturalism, or attention to contemporary culture. It seems to us that the Orthodox Church currently lacks all of these virtues.”
If the authorities for the longest time have essentially ignored the church (it was almost made obsolete during the height of Communism) why is it now suddenly being given such a vanguard role in the way society should conduct itself?
And below I have included a myriad of views expressed by international and local press. Women? No they can go to hell as far as some of us men are concerned….
Russia
Igor Maltsev on Izvestiya daily’s website:
The next step would be to burn anyone who says that the earth is round. That would be nice. After smashing justice up with a god’s hammer, after mixing paganism, communism, commissars and papacy together, what we suddenly received is another Afghanistan-1980.
Stanislav Minin on the website of centrist daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta:
Two years in jail is probably not too harsh, as ‘things are tougher in some countries’. Of course they are. In some countries people get pelted with stones and in others, I think, they still get eaten. But there is little honour in looking more humane than a man-eater.
Mikhail Rostovskiy on the website of Moskovskiy Komsomolets tabloid:
The Pussy Riot verdict – two years – is a totally Bolshevist outcome of a thoroughly Bolshevist trial caused by a 100% Bolshevist act by the defendants… The Pussy Riot case is a huge moral and political defeat suffered by the Russian authorities and society alike.
Aleksandr Grishin in Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda:
Who would have thought six months ago that the verdict for three fools tried for hooliganism would almost become the main political event in a huge country. Liberal social activists, people of non-traditional sexual orientation, arts intelligentsia and circles close to it threw themselves to defend members of the infamous Pussy Riot band.
France
Editorial in Liberation, headlined ‘Gulag’:
This case is indicative of the power system under Putin and his puppet Medvedev. A travesty of justice and democracy. Russia is not a country of the rule of law, it has nothing to do alongside the G8 democracies.
Spain
Editorial in El Pais:
Perpetrators of a similar act would have also been punished in another country, but not by two years in prison. But Russia is a country that is more than dubious as far as freedoms go. Putin’s regime… mistook the punks’ challenge for a threat, and by acting like it did has turned these girls into global icons of the challenge to his authority.
Germany
Peter Storm in German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung:
From the beginning, the trial has been used to show the opposition that even harder times are about to begin… The political climate in Russia is approaching freezing point. How long can Putin preserve his system?
Julian Hans in centre-left daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung:
The process was a bizarre spectacle, the conviction fits Putin’s calculations: By convicting the three Pussy Riot activists to two years in prison, Russia shows the world that it has abandoned its path to the rule of law and democracy.
Commentary by Uwe Klussmann on Spiegel Online International edition website:
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 towards the state… By turning basically harmless artists into criminals, the regime has transformed the trial against Pussy Riot into a political time bomb.
via The American Thinker (commentator):
When I was a kid, America was a capitalist nation engaging a “Cold War” against Soviet imperialism/communism. I am now a 46 year old man and Americans are waging resistance against an Imperialist/communist government and a socialized economy being imposed from the White House, while the Russians are sending feminist, punk-rock Marxists to prison for desecrating the Russian Orthodox Church, blaspheming Christianity and criticizing the “corporate state.”
“G…G…G..Gee, Wally. Who woulda thunk it?”
The Russians’ mentality is still in the Stone Age. Please come into the 21st Century.
In the USA, all three would have received probation. Putin flexing his muscles again!
These cunts should be executed, 2 years is some sad joke…
Russia has a law. do you want Russia to broke the law for these *****? who cares? 80% of common Russians support their imprisonment and thinks that 2 years is not enough. they could give them up to 7 years for hooliganism and will be right. look at these b*tches they are smiling! and they will do some sh*t again when free. they are not even sorry for abusing millions of people. 2 years? no one sad for them anyway.