Just when you thought P*ssy Riot might cool their heels on kicking the hornet's nest and all things Putin — they were just released from the bowels of prison after all — they go ahead and make a music video mocking the olympics (using footage of Sochi police beating them no less) and generally make me want to lick their Doc Martens in adoration and punk rock pride.
Originally imprisoned for performing/protesting inside Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savor — criticizing the Orthodox Russian Church's support of Putin — the women have been publicly lambasting the dictator's generally fascist behaviors and fist-pumping about feminism, LGBT rights and Russia's leadership since 2011.
Three members of the five performers —Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich—were convicted of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred," and sentenced to two years imprisonment in 2012. Eventually Samutsevich was released, but Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova spent 21 months toiling away in "corrective labor camps" amid allegations of abuse and flagrant rights violations; on September 23rd The Guardian published a scathing open letter from Tolokonnikova which detailed the deplorable conditions of her life at Penal Colony No 14.
One particularly dreamy passage reads:
In another unit, new seamstresses who couldn't keep up were undressed and forced to sew naked. No one dares complain to the administration because all they will do is smile and send the prisoner back into the unit, where the "snitch" will be beaten on the orders of that same administration. For the colony administration, controlled hazing is a convenient method for forcing prisoners into total submission to their systemic abuse of human rights.
A threatening, anxious atmosphere pervades the work zone. Eternally sleep-deprived, overwhelmed by the endless race to fulfill inhumanly large quotas, prisoners are always on the verge of breaking down, screaming at each other, fighting over the smallest things. Just recently, a young woman got stabbed in the head with a pair of scissors because she didn't turn in a pair of pants on time. Another tried to cut her own stomach open with a hacksaw. They stopped her.
Nice, right? Prior to the Olympics, Putin released the girls from prison in perhaps the least convincing and most desperate PR-move of all time. Of course our Rioters were having none of that faux amnesty, openly calling Putin's decision to release them a "sham" and and "absolutely laughable."
And so their political parade marches on. Bask in their latest below:
