Festival of Dangerous Ideas: Pussy Riot

Blog as filing cabinet item.

Note: RantWoman has a high tolerance for leftoid rags but also notes important commentary and documentation.

First dangerous idea: RantWoman has abandoned squeamishness about use of this band's name.

http://www.themilitant.com/2014/7835/783551.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 78/No. 35      October 6, 2014

Pussy Riot members address ‘Festival of Dangerous Ideas’
BY LINDA HARRIS
SYDNEY, Australia — Prison camps in Russia are “like the detention  centers in Australia,” said Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, one of the members  of Pussy Riot who had been imprisoned in penal colonies for protesting against the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin. She spoke to an  audience of some 1,500 people at the “Festival of Dangerous Ideas” held  in Sydney Opera House Aug. 31.

Before the festival, Tolokonnikova, joined by fellow Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina, met with Sydney activists protesting the Australian government’s policy of mandatory imprisonment of refugees who arrive by sea in remote detention centers.

Tolokonnikova said some people proposed they boycott the festival  because of a connection between some of the festival organizers and  Transfield, the company that runs the detention centers. It is much more important for us to come and join those fighting here to close these centers, they both said.

During the Sochi Olympics held in Russia, Tolokonnikova said, “We were against people boycotting the Olympics. We needed their support in Sochi when we were whipped by the Cossacks during our [protest] performance.”

The two activists also spoke out against the Russian government’s war against Ukraine and against Washington’s wars. If the U.S. was not involved in military aggression around the world, Tolokonnikova said, Putin would not be able to use this in attempting to justify his assault on Ukrainian sovereignty.

Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina spent nearly two years in prison in Russia. They were convicted on charges of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” after performing a “punk prayer” in Moscow’s Russian Orthodox Cathedral of Christ in 2012 condemning political repression by thePutin
regime.

“Pussy Riot started in reaction to an authoritarian regime,” Alyokhina said, and is “continuing as an international movement.” When traveling to other countries they look into the conditions in the prisons and try to meet with those involved in different struggles, she said. “If any support is needed, we will always be super happy to offer all the help we can,” she said.

Since their release in December 2013 they have continued to speak out against the Putin regime in face of a rise in attacks on political rights in Russia. They formed Zona Prava, a human rights organization to fight for prisoners’ rights. Its application for legal status has been denied three times.
 “Our conclusion is that you should never trust the government,” Tolokonnikova said to applause. The second conclusion, she added, “is that if you resist you will get results.”

The drug laws are used politically in Russia, as they are in many other places, Tolokonnikova said. About half of all convictions in Russia are related to drug charges. Less than 1 percent of those who get charged are acquitted — “so few we don’t even know that word.”

Alyokhina described the brutal conditions in the penal colonies, with prisoners working 16 hours a day, seven days a week. Women produce police uniforms on ancient sewing machines, year after year. “Obviously this doesn’t make anyone love the police system,” she said.

We and the other prisoners never lost our sense of humor, Alyokhina said. We all worked together one day to sew a set of clothes for a tiny, miniature Russian cop.

The Russian labor code does not apply to prisoners, and they have no access to legal representation or medical care. “These are things we are campaigning around now,” she said. “All these things are possible to change,” Tolokonnikova said.

Asked about attacks on gay rights in Russia, Tolokonnikova said that the regime scapegoats sections of the population in an effort to divide and weaken all those who oppose the conditions working people face there. Today gays are being blamed by the government for economic and social
problems, like immigrant workers before them.