Me and the cop: Pussy Riot releases new protest song
July 18, 2018
Feminist punk group Pussy Riot has put out a new video after members were sentenced to 15 days in prison following a pitch invasion at the World Cup final in Russia. The group is no stranger to high-profile protests.
Image: picture alliance / dpa
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Riot Days: Pussy Riot's acts of defiance
We take a look back at Russian punk provocateurs Pussy Riot and their remarkable defiance of political persecution and nationalist ideology in Russia.
Image: picture alliance / dpa
Starting a riot
All-girl Russian punk protest band Pussy Riot created an international storm in 2012 with a guerrilla performance in Moscow's main cathedral that called for the Virgin Mary to protect Russia against Vladimir Putin, who was elected to a new term as Russia's president a few days later. The protest attracted worldwide attention, and three members of the group were arrested.
Image: picture alliance / dpa
State censorship
During the ensuing court hearing in Moscow in August 2012, Pussy Riot members Nadya Tolokonnikova (right), Maria Alyokhina (center) and Yekaterina Samutsevich (left) could be seen in a glass-walled cage. Support for the Pussy Riot activists came from all over the world.
Image: Getty Images/AFP
Cause celebre
Pussy Riot's iconic colorful balaclava face masks allowed supporters near and far to become "members of the band." Here, a protester is arrested during a demonstration in support of Pussy Riot in 2012 in front of the Russian consulate in New York on the day a Russian judge found three members of the provocative punk band guilty of hooliganism.
Image: AP
No way out
Pussy Riot band member Nadya Tolokonnikova looks out from a holding cell during a court hearing in April 2013. Tolokonnikova was appealing her conviction for "hooliganism motivated by religious hate," for which she was serving two years in a remote prison. Many international stars such as Madonna called for the Pussy Riot members' release.
Image: Reuters
Back under attack
After their release from prison under an amnesty in late 2013, Pussy Riot were soon protesting again, this time at the Winter Olympics in the Russian city of Sochi. While they were preparing to sing the song "Putin Will Teach You to Love Your Motherland," a spoof on state nationalism, a Cossack militiaman who was armed with a whip attacked band member Nadya Tolokonnikova and a photographer.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo
Fight the power
Masked Pussy Rot members leave a police station in Adler during the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics in February 2014. Two members of the band, Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, were detained after they were wrongfully suspected of stealing a handbag from their hotel.
Image: Reuters
Getting the word out
By 2015, Moscow-based Maria Alyokhina (left) and Nadya Tolokonnikova increasingly traveled Europe to continue campaigning against Russian President Vladimir Putin. Here they answer questions from the audience at the 23rd Sziget (Island) Festival on Shipyard Island in Budapest, Hungary, on August 14, 2015.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/B. Mohai
Part of Banksy's world
Here, in September 2015, Pussy Riot's Nadya Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina performed at the closing party of the "Dismaland" project by graffiti artist Banksy. The street artist described his subversive, pop-up exhibition at the derelict seafront Tropicana lido in the UK as a "bemusement park."
Image: Getty Images/J.Dyson
How to start a revolution
Pussy Riot co-founder Nadya Tolokonnikova wrote her own guide to individual freedom in the face of totalitarianism, "How to Start a Revolution," which was published in 2016. She soon toured the book around the world, stopping in Berlin and at the Lit.Cologne literary festival (above).
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/R. Vennenbernd
Provoking the corrupt security state
In 2016, Pussy Riot were again indulging in political provocation at home, releasing a film clip to their new protest song "Chaika" that mocks corrupt and violent Russian security agencies – under whom the jailed band members faced "endless humiliations" – after it was revealed that the country's chief prosecutor, Yuri Chaika, had links to the local mafia.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/D.Sinyakov
Trump meets Putin
Pussy Riot's criticism not only targets Russian authorities: At this performance in a San Francisco theater in February, a caricature of Donald Trump accompanied Vladimir Putin on stage. During the event, they discussed the current state of human rights in Russia, and how LGBT individuals and political activists in prison are affected.
Image: Getty Images/T.Mosenfelder
The struggle continues
On August 6, 2017, Pussy Riot members Maria Alyokhina and Olga Borisova held flares and a banner on a bridge near a prison in Yakutsk, Russia to protest the jailing of film director Oleg Sentsov. He was arrested in Crimea – which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014 – and convicted by a Russian military court of conspiracy to commit terror attacks. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/Zona.media
Live in Germany
In September 2017, the group performed their "feminist punk manifesto" in Germany at Frankfurt's Künstlerhaus Mousonturm. Titled "Riot Days," the concert is based on band member Maria Alyokhina's eponymous book that describes her co-founding of Pussy Riot in 2011 with Nadya Tolokonnikova and Yekaterina Samutsevich.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/B.Roessler
Shutting down Trump Tower
In October 2017, the group stormed Trump Tower in New York City to voice opposition to Putin and Trump and the incarceration of political prisoners. Wearing their famous balaclavas, they held up a banner once again urging the release of Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov. Police closed the 58-story skyscraper for a half hour.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/J. Szenes
Protest on the pitch
Dressed as police officers, members of the collective invaded the pitch during the World Cup final in Russia, interrupting the game. According to the group, the goals of the protest were for the Russian authorities to free all political prisoners, stop illegal arrests at public rallies and allow political competition in the country. The members were sentenced to 15 days of jail time.
Image: Reuters/D. Staples
A suspected poisoning
One of the Pussy Riot activists at the FIFA World Cup protest was Pyotr Verzilov, who is also a publisher at MediaZona, an online news site that focuses on human rights violations in Russia's penal system. In September 2018, the dissident experienced symptoms of poisoning. He was sent to Berlin for treatment and was placed under police protection. He recovered.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/Cinema for Peace Foundation
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Russian punk group Pussy Riot put out a new song Tuesday that envisions protestor-embracing, gay-friendly police officers. This comes after four band members were arrested for storming the field during the World Cup final at the weekend.
"Track About a Good Cop" marks a new musical direction for the feminist rockers: They make use of the beats and synthesizers of house music for their satire on police officers.
The video shows four Russian police officers — three men, one woman — move from standing sternly in the snow to dancing flirtatiously as if in a nightclub.
"Girls and boys / Sugary streets / Cops are kissing under the clouds," goes the refrain, with its homoerotic undertones. "Me and the cop / Me and the cop / We have turned from enemies into a duo."
In a statement, Pussy Riot called the song "a utopian dream about alternative political reality in which instead of arresting activists and putting them in jail, cops are joining activists."
The band said it was envisioning a "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."
Shaking things up
It also put out a list of demands including freedom for its four members who were jailed for interrupting Sunday's globally broadcast final between France and Croatia.
On Monday, a Moscow court sentenced Veronika Nikulshina, Olga Kuracheva, Olga Pakhtusova and Pyotr Verzilov to 15 days in prison. It also banned them from visiting sports events for three years.
The four members of Pussy Riot, a Russian feminist activist group, were found guilty of "grossly violating the rules for spectators' behavior" and given the maximum punishment possible under the charge.
Storming the field at the France vs. Croatia final World Cup matchImage: Reuters/D. Staples
The protest action took place at Moscow's Luzhniki stadium on Sunday and briefly halted play in the second half of the match between France and Croatia. Watching from the stands were Russian President Vladimir Putin and other world leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron.
Pussy Riot immediately posted messages on social media claiming responsibility for the protest. They also issued a list of six demands, including "Let all political prisoners free," "Stop illegal arrests on rallies" and "Allow political competition in the country."
Another famous protest
Pussy Riot is perhaps most famous for performing an anti-Putin protest song in a central Moscow church in February 2012.
Three of the group's members were subsequently convicted of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" at a trial that attracted global media attention and drew protests from rights groups.
On Tuesday, the European Court of Human Rights condemned Russia's treatment of the protestors, finding that three Pussy Riot members arrested in 2012 had been subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment and that their rights to a fair trial and to liberty had been violated.
Group members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina were released after serving 22 months of their two-year sentences. The other convicted member, Yekaterina Samutsevich, was given a suspended sentence.
