Three young Russians were deemed a “threat to society” by a Moscow judge and sentenced to two years in a penal colony.
The women were members of the band Pussy Riot, which played a one-minute protest song critical of Russia’s then-presidential candidate Vladimir Putin inside Moscow’s main Orthodox cathedral.
Putin was overwhelmingly reinstated as president last spring.
A YouTube video shows the band members’ arrest by police inside the cathedral while performing — although that’s a loosely applied term.
Doesn’t matter. Vulgar or not, the unreasonably harsh sentence shows an increasingly intolerant Russia.
Pussy Riot does not produce high-brow music. Its music is of the punk rock genre with lots of unintelligible ranting — of course it is in Russian.
Its performance purportedly beseeched the Virgin Mary to rid Russia of President Putin. A miracle, indeed. Putin has been in power as either president or prime minister since 2000.
During their trial the three women, two of whom are mothers of young children, apologized to the church, saying they had never intended to offend it, but rather sought to make a political statement against Putin and against the church patriarch, Kirill I, for supporting Putin’s campaign for a third term as president.
CORRUPTION is rampant in Russia. Police, politicians, church leaders, doctors and those in media are complicit in their oppression of the Russian people.
According to a photo essay in Sunday’s New York Times, corruption is now so rampant it’s “just a way of life,” from heads of state on down.
That’s a sad commentary on a society.
It’s also a predictable outcome of unbalanced power. Victims take out their oppression on others engendering a state of suspiciousness and mistrust.
That’s a very big reason a democracy trumps all other forms of governance.
Meanwhile, the world watches in horror as one of the world’s most powerful leaders takes his country into the dark ages.
