Exclusive #FODI Livestream: Pussy Riot In Conversation
Nadya and Masha, two members of the punk feminist collective who were imprisoned for two years after a Moscow protest, will be speaking of their experience and their beliefs.
In February 2012, five members of the Russian feminist punk collective, Pussy Riot, staged an anti-Putin activist performance in a Moscow Cathedral, before police intervened. In August, three of them — Nadezhda (Nadya) Tolokonnikova, Maria (Masha) Alekhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich — were found guilty of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” against the Orthodox Church. They were sentenced with two years in prison.
The US Embassy in Moscow found the sentence “disproportionate”; the European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton called the sentence “deeply troubling”; Amnesty International named them prisoners of conscience due to “the severity of the response of the Russian authorities”.
In October 2012, Pussy Riot became recipients the Lennon Ono Grant for Peace, and in December 2013, after growing public outrage — and an amnesty granted just ahead of the Sochi Winter Olympics — Nadya and Masha were freed. (Yekaterina had already been released on probation.) They emerged to find Putin’s regime even more entrenched, after the annexation of Crimea and the crisis in Ukraine; in March this year, after Nadya, Masha and other members of Pussy Riot were assaulted by Cossack militia in Sochi, they announced the launch of a prisoners’ rights NGO: Zona Prava.
Both Nadya and Masha are appearing at Festival of Dangerous Ideas after calls for them to boycott the festival because of its links to Transfield and Operation Sovereign Borders. In a talk earlier this morning they likened Australian detention centres with the Russian justice system, so it’s probably going to get interesting.
The panel is being broadcast live from the Sydney Opera House at AEST 7:15pm on Sunday August 31.