My Beautiful, Crazy Life

nickturse:

In Russia, Maria Alyokhina, 24, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 29 of the punk band Pussy Riot were convicted of hooliganism today. They have been sentenced to two years in prison.  “The girls’ actions were sacrilegious, blasphemous and broke the church’s rules,” Judge Marina Syrova told the court as the women stood watching from inside a glass cage.

In her closing statement, Alyokhina told the court:

This trial is highly typical and speaks volumes. The current government will have occasion to feel shame and embarrassment because of it for a long time to come. At each stage it has embodied a travesty of justice. As it turned out, our performance, at first a small and somewhat absurd act, snowballed into an enormous catastrophe. This would obviously not happen in a healthy society. Russia, as a state, has long resembled an  organism sick to the core. And the sickness explodes out into the open when you rub up against its inflamed abscesses. At first and for a long time this sickness gets hushed up in public, but eventually it always finds resolution through dialogue. And look—this is the kind of dialogue that our government is capable of. This trial is not only a malignant and grotesque mask, it is the “face” of the government’s dialogue with the people of our country.

(Thanks to N+1 for the translation.)

Photo credits: Aleshkovsky Mitya/ITAR-TASS, Corbis, AP, Reuters

These women are my new idols.