Punk Band Given Two Years Over Anti-Kremlin Protest - Wall Street Journal

Punk Band Given Two Years Over Anti-Kremlin Protest - Wall Street Journal

By RICHARD BOUDREAUX and ALEXANDER KOLYANDR

Associated Press

Members of the feminist punk group Pussy Riot sit in a glass cage at a court room in Moscow on Friday.

MOSCOWâ€"Three members of a once-unheralded feminist groupâ€"whose anti-Kremlin protest inside Russia's main Orthodox cathedral led to one of the most politically charged trials of the country's post-Soviet eraâ€"were convicted of hooliganism Friday and sentenced to two years in prison.

The diminutive provocateurs, in handcuffs, stood in a glass-enclosed pen in a Moscow courtroom as Judge Marina Syrova announced her decision, ratifying what critics of President Vladimir Putin call a growing crackdown on dissent.

Three members of a feminist group known as Pussy Riot were convicted of hooliganism Friday and sentenced to two years in prison after their anti-Kremlin protest inside Russia's main Orthodox cathedral. Lukas Alpert joins Markets Hub from Moscow. Photo: Reuters.

Global Protests to Support Band

Reuters

Demonstrators in Paris take part in a rally in support of Russian punk band Pussy Riot.

The judge said the three young women, members of the Pussy Riot performance-art collective, committed "a grave violation of public order, showing obvious disrespect for society" by performing a "punk prayer" near the cathedral's altar on Feb. 21.

Outside the brick courthouse, hundreds of people protested the verdict and police blocked the street with metal barriers to hold them back. At least 30 were detained, the Interfax news agency said. Nearby, about 50 Orthodox Christian believers demonstrated against the women, singing religious hymns.

Across the city, activists draped statues of the poet Alexander Pushkin and other historic figures with colored balaclavas like those worn by the women's collective.

The case divided Russia, drew sharp international criticism and was viewed as a test of Mr. Putin's tolerance for opposition activism, and prompted ridicule by critics of his 12-year domination of the country's politics.

Arrested in early March, the three women have been held without bail on a charge of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred," which carries a maximum sentence of seven years in prison. Last week the prosecutor asked for three-year sentences.

The eight-day trial also highlighted, more sharply than any other, the cultural divide between the secular, Westernized forces that last winter began staging large demonstrations against Mr. Putin and more conservative Russians who, led in part by the Orthodox Church hierarchy, have rallied to his support.

And it underscored skepticism in Russia and abroad about the country's commitment to judicial independence and the rule of law. While denying any bias, Judge Syrova rejected the defense lawyers' requests to summon their own witnesses and struck down most of their questions to those called by the prosecutors.

The three defendantsâ€"Maria Alyokhina, 24 years old, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30â€"testified that their Feb. 21 "punk prayer" in Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral was a protest against the church's leader, Patriarch Kirill I, for backing Mr. Putin's candidacy in the March 4 presidential election.

Wearing brightly colored balaclavas, short skirts and tights, the women entered the nearly empty cathedral's ambo, a railed-off area in front of the altar usually reserved for clergy, and began miming their performanceâ€"jumping around, kicking and playing air guitar while collaborators videotaped them.

Guards and attendants stopped them in less than a minute. But a video, spliced with earlier footage from a different church and set to music with lewd lyrics and the refrain "Mother of God, drive Putin out," went viral on the Internet.

The performance aroused deep anger among many of the Orthodox faithful, who make up a majority of the Russian population. The patriarch, who had once hailed Mr. Putin's rule as "a miracle of God," denounced the women's antics as "blasphemous" and led an open-air prayer service for tens of thousands in support of the church.

At the trial, prosecution lawyers went beyond the hooliganism charge and accused Pussy Riot of insulting the entire Christian world. They sought to portray the women as devils and the church as the target of heretical attacks by secular society, especially the liberal political opposition.

Nine church workers presented as victims in the case testified that they had been suffering "moral damage" since witnessing the stunt.

In closing statements on Aug. 10, the women asked Orthodox believers to forgive them for any offense. They said their stunt was part of a series of performance-art protests launched last fallout of disgust for the Putin regime, not for religion.

In her ruling Friday, Judge Syrova said the women made no mention of Mr. Putin or politics inside the cathedral.

The women's defenders mounted a world-wide campaign, gaining support from Russian and Western music stars, including Madonna, Paul McCartney and Sting. The U.S. State Department voiced concern about what it called the "politically motivated prosecution of the Russian opposition and pressure on those who express dissenting views, " while the U.S. Embassy in Russia criticized the sentence handed by the court.

"Today's sentence in the Pussy Riot case looks disproportionate to the actions," the embassy wrote on its Twitter microblog in Russian.

Rallies on behalf of Pussy Riot were held in American and European cities at the hour of Friday's court session.

In Ukraine four feminists, one of them topless, used a chainsaw to hack down a wooden cross in Kiev's central square. About 300 people at London's Royal Court Theatre heard three British actresses read translations of the defendant's closing statements to the court.

In Russia, initial outrage over the stunt and support for harsh punishment dwindled as the women languished in jail.

A survey by the independent Levada Center in March found that 46% of Russians thought the women should serve at least two years in prison. By last month, those holding that view had dropped to 26%, while 49% said they should be sentenced to perform community service or pay fines.

The shifting sentiment raised the question of Mr. Putin's interest in the case.

Since his return to the presidency on May 7, after four years as prime minister, his government has prosecuted other demonstrators, raided opposition leaders' homes, and tightened laws on public protests, Internet regulation and nongovernmental groupsâ€"all without provoking a resurgence of the large demonstrations that rattled the Kremlin last winter.

But except for the Pussy Riot three, no activist arrested in the months of unrest has spent more than a few weeks in jail, and Russian commentators said a long sentence for the women might radicalize the opposition. After weeks of silence about the case, Mr. Putin said early this month the women "should not be judged too harshly," though he saw "nothing good" in their performance.

As the trial sped toward a conclusion, sessions ran as long as 10 hours a day and the defendants said they weren't able to get enough rest or food in between to properly prepare for testimony.

Judge Syrova rejected allegations of favoritism toward the prosecution and turned down defense motions to remove herself from the case.

Write to Richard Boudreaux at richard.boudreaux@wsj.com and Alexander Kolyandr at Alexander.Kolyandr@dowjones.com

Corrections & Amplifications
Defendant Yekaterina Samutsevich is 30 years old. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said she was 29.

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