Pussy Riot share "Track About Good Cop" following World Cup Protest
Following Pussy Riot‘s World Cup protest, where four members rushed the field during Sunday’s final match in Moscow, the collective has released a new video, “Track About Good Cop.” It ties in with the “Policeman Enters The Game” message of their World Cup protest – here’s more on that from Pussy Riot:
This track is a utopian dream about alternative political reality in which instead of arresting activists and putting them in jail cops are joining activists. The world where cops got rid of homophobia, stopped the war on drugs and actually understood that it’s much better to be joyful and nice to people.
You can watch that video above.
Pussy Riot members Olga Pahtusova, Olga Kuracheva, Nika Nikulshina, and Peter Verzilov were all given 15-day jail sentences (and banned from sporting events for three years) for the World Cup field invasion. With this video comes a list of political demands from the group:
We demand:
1. Free Pussy Riot members Olga Pahtusova, Olga Kuracheva, Nika Nikulshina, Peter Verzilov, who are jailed for 15 days for their “Policeman Enters The Game” action during the World Cup.
2. Free Oleg Sentsov and other political prisoners.
3. Don’t put people in jail for likes and reposts.
4. Stop mass arrests at political rallies.
5. Stop fucking with Navalny.
6. Stop imprisoning so many people for 228 article of Criminal code (drug offenses).
7. Cancel 282 article of Russian Criminal code (“extremism”, one of the main political criminal articles)
8. Freedom of speech and expression in Russia.
9. Give a federal TV-channel to an activist media outlet “Mediazona” (zona.media)
In other news, the European Court of Human Rights condemned Russia today (7/17) for their treatment of the 2012 Pussy Riot protest in a Moscow cathedral that had members Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova in prison for nearly two years. From Reuters:
The court, which ordered Russia to pay a total of 48,760 euros in damages and judicial expenses, said in its ruling that it “accepted that a reaction to breaching the rules of conduct in a place of religious worship might have been warranted.”
“However, it found that sentencing them to imprisonment for simply having worn brightly colored clothes, waved their arms and kicked their legs around and used strong language, without analyzing the lyrics of their song or the context of their performance, had been exceptionally severe.”
Russia’s Justice Ministry said on its website that the ruling had not yet taken effect and that it had three months to decide if it would appeal against it.
