Monday, August 7, 2017

Washington Post & Pitchfork: Pussy Riot Members Briefly Detained After Prison Protest

Washington Post/Associated Press: 

 2 members of Russian punk band Pussy Riot briefly detained


MOSCOW — Two members of the Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot were briefly detained Monday after rallying for the release of a Ukrainian filmmaker outside his Siberian prison.
During Sunday’s protest in Yakutsk where Oleg Sentsov is serving his sentence, the band members unfurled a banner on a nearby bridge that read “Free Sentsov!”
Longtime Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina tweeted that she and Olga Borisova were taken to a police station following their detention earlier in the day and faced a court hearing over charges of holding an unauthorized rally.
Borisova later said on Facebook that she and Alyokhina were released after a judge found flaws in the case. It was unclear if the police would refile charges.A Russian military court convicted Sentsov, who comes from the Crimean Peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, of conspiracy to commit terror attacks and sentenced him to 20 years in prison.
In this handout photo taken on Sunday, Aug. 6, 2017 and released on Monday, Aug. 7, 2017 by Zona.media, Maria Alyokhina and Olga Borisova, members of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot, hold flares and a banner on the bridge nearby outside the prison colony in Yakutsk, Russia, Monday, Aug. 7, 2017. Film director Oleg Sentsov of Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, was convicted of conspiracy to commit terror attacks by a Russian military court in 2015 and sentenced to 20 years in prison. (Zona.media via AP/Associated Press)
Sentsov, who made two short movies and the 2012 feature film “Gamer,” denied the charges, which he and his supporters denounced as political punishment for his opposition to Crimea’s annexation.













Pitchfork: Pussy Riot’s Masha Alekhina and Olya Borisova were briefly detained in Yakutsk, Siberia this morning after protesting the detention of Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, The Washington Post reports. Yesterday, the pair had unveiled a “Free Sentsov” banner and set off flares on a bridge near the detention center holding Sentsov, according to the report. Watch video footage from the incident below, via Alekhina’s Facebook page. The group tweeted this morning that “2 pussy riot members are in a police station now,” and later shared a photo of Alekhina and Borisova following their release. The protest was part of an ongoing wave of condemnations of the Russian government, who handed Sentsov a 20-year prison camp sentence in 2015 on controversial terrorism charges. Pitchfork has emailed Pussy Riot’s representative for further details.
Pussy Riot recently announced an eight-week immersive theatre piece at London’s Saatchi Gallery, centering on the “epic ordeal when they were arrested, forced through a flawed judicial system and finally transported to a Russian jail” back in 2012.

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