Some Alexander Lukashevich (a relative of the Minsk tyrant?), a functionary of the Russian Federation Foreign Ministry responded to the "criticism" that leaders of a few civilized European states timidly voiced, murmured rather sheepishly, by calling the verdict in the Pussy Riot case undeservingly harsh. Comrade Lukashevich then said that there is no big deal about sentencing because Germany also has a law on the books that penalizes deliberate offenses against religion in the places of worship with up to three years in jail and Austria has a similar where maximum jail term is six months though ( "members" of or perhaps in the Pussy Riot, already spent five behind bars). Lukashevich conveniently forgot to mention that unlike the Russian Federation (which is neither Russian nor a federation), neither the Austrian Republic nor Germany are one man run dictatorships.
The Comrade did not say that in Austria and Germany a local equivalent of the Pussy Riot would be free to perform wherever they wanted without need to break into say Vienna's St. Stephan's Cathedral to make any point which if they made there would probably be misunderstood. Also in Austria the church and the state are not separate but they are in Russia and the public funding of church buildings is not allowed while Christ the Savior building would hardly be classified as church in Austria or Germany, people would find it odd why a massage parlor or pizzeria should be called... a church.
So what is the difference between Russian Federation (when I say Russia down in the text I still mean Russian Federation which is not Russia exactly, but let's keep it simple) and Austrian or Germany (I am less familiar with the latter)?
In Russia one in effect now needs an advance permit to perform in a public place or people in fact need permits to gather in public with whatever purpose - be it to listen to the music or to pray for dismemberment of Putin.
This goes on while the Russian Constitution specifically spells out the right of citizens to gather freely or assemble in public space, to demonstrate and to picket (government buildings) without asking one, lest the government, for a permission.
The Constitution says and mind you that it is the Fundamental Law and as such overrides anything else unless it is suspended or done away with it.
quote
Article 31
Citizens of the Russian Federation have the right to peaceful, unarmed assembly and may stage public gatherings, meetings, demonstrations, processions and engage in picketing.
unquote
anything else that infringes that right is legally null and void
Article 44
1. Everyone shall be guaranteed the freedom of literary, artistic, scientific, technical and other types of creative activity, and teaching. Intellectual property shall be protected by law.
Article 29.
4. Everyone shall have the right to freely look for, receive, transmit, produce and distribute information by any legal way. The list of data comprising state secrets shall be determined by a federal law.
5. The freedom of mass communication shall be guaranteed.
Censorship is illegal.
end of quote
Now those four provisions of the Russian Constitution are illegally suspended and citizens are stripped of most basic liberties.
quote
Article 76/3 of the Russian Constitution:
Federal laws may not contradict/be in conflict with the federal Constitutional laws
unquote
(the above means that those rules and laws passed by Putinista state restricting civil liberties or in effect banning demonstrations and public performances are really not worth Putin's own used toilet paper).
Furthermore the right of Russian citizens to assembly, to non-discrimination and their freedom of expression are protected by the European Convention on Human Rights, which under Russian Fundamental law takes precedence over all federal laws:
Chapter 1. The Fundamentals of the Constitutional System
Article 15
quote
4. The universally-recognized norms of international law and international treaties and agreements of the Russian Federation shall be an integral part of its legal system. If an international treaty or international agreement the Russian Federation is a party to, presupposes other rules than those envisaged by the (domestic) law, the rules of the international agreement shall be applied (instead).
unquote
It is obvious that Pussy Riot would have been arrested had they merely asked for a permit to do what they did. They would have never obtained that permit. We have the evidence of wholesale denial of permits to assembly although the authorities' demand that citizens even appply for such a permit is totally illegal - in no place does the Constitution state that any minor demonstration must be explicitly permitted in writing by those against whom the people are demonstrating.
Recently, authorities in Nizhni Novgorod had denied permission to a group of citizens who wanted to make a collective trip to a store in order to buy a loaf of bread. May be in a country like Sweden the authorities would have told the petitioners that there is no permit required to buy bread. In Putinista Russia they denied it because the saw this application as a form of protest. As dissent.
Now whether Pussy Riots are talented musicians or not is a different story. I believe they are perhaps one of the most talented musicians in today's Russia (that says more about the state of music in the Muscovite state rather than about talents of those riotous pussies). But their talents are irrelevant. You have a right to express yourself in public that is protected by the constitution and by the international treaties the Russian Federation is a party to.
My argument is that if they are illegally denied the freedom to perform in public that is guaranteed to them by the Constitution (the fundamental law of the land that is superior to all other laws) and by the European Convention on human rights, then they are entitled to perform anywhere, including the public building - as the cathedral of Christ the Savior is not a church but a public building maintained
at the public expense , at the expense of members of the Pussy Riot group and of their parents, in a country where state and church are constitutionally separate
In case of the Pussy Riot, the Putinist state is clearly outside the law and not the Pussy Riot.
The state might have power of coercion like courts, prisons and concentration camps at its disposal but be still acting illegally.
Here is an example, Nazis in occupied France or Greece had passed laws, rules, regulations, ordinances, sentenced people, executed them, shipped people off to concentration camps, but their activity was considered illegal by most of the world and by the subjugated populations, which though might have temporarily submitted to the terror unleashed upon it did not hold the regime of occupation as legitimate. I think what we see in Russia is a parallel to that - in some cases like in parts of northern Caucasus where the only authority is the force the situation is almost that of a mirror, in large Russian cities people refer to government officials, their servants and police as "occupiers" although I'd say that perhaps the Nazis had more legal and moral authority in some of the occupied territories (say in the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia) while Putinista state is clearly acting outside of the domestic and international law, i.e. is the state in what is left of Russia that is an outlaw. And here lies the fundamental difference from Austria and Germany.
If the state as is clearly the case in Russia has placed itself outside of the boundaries of law and is acting obviously illegally then it cannot judge Pussy Riots who acted within their constitutional rights. If we transplant the case to the soil of one of US states, say to Rhode Island, or to France, and if we had a situation when the Pussy Riot could perform anywhere they wanted to but instead chose to break into a church (which is not public property there but private) and stage a mock concert there during a service to which people came for quiet worship, then they would deserve to be arrested and prosecuted with disturbance of public peace or perhaps with the offense of trespassing, although in all likelihood in a realthey would be let go to avoid a scandal.
However the Pussy Riot's case is entirely different, in fact it is the opposite of what I described in the previous paragraph.
One also should keep in mind that Pussy Riot did not perform in the Temple of
Christ the Savior Commerce because the short staged movie clip that is being circulated on the Internet is clearly out of tact and there is loud music but the video does not show any musical instruments deployed, there are no electrical guitars playing, no percussion, so the audio track was then laid over the video, it is not authentic, and that presents the story in an entirely different light.
The light is that of a fabrication, of a show trial, of a grotesque political persecution of three young women who attempted to exercise their constitutional rights and were punished for doing so by the illegitimate outlaw of a state because in their message they offended the usurper that stands at or rather sits on the head of that lawless state.
Together with the recently passed illegal discriminatory legislation that bans lesbians and homosexuals from gathering in public (the laws are illegal fourfold or rather eightfold as they violate both the Russian Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights separate provisions on non-discrimination, the right to assembly, the right of self-expression, the right of legal recourse), the political persecution of the Pussy Riot can become a foundation for the Defense of Freedom in Russia Act in the USA and similar sanctions in the EU, modeled perhaps on Belarus and targeting officials instead of ordinary people, something I see in the form of a Magnitsky List on steroids. At this stage when the state in Russia has become an international and domestic outlaw, only foreign sanctions targeted at deputies and officials of the Muscovite state would force it to modify its nasty behavior. As far as individuals are concerned, the deputies, functionaries and officials of the Muscovite state are fully oriented toward countries where civil liberties are respected, such "abominations" as gay parades permitted and a group of citizens won't need to ask for a permit to make a collective purchase of a loaf of bread - they drive or are being driven in big foreign cars, send their kids to study to civilized parts of Europe and the USA, have foreign residence permits and hold enormous assets, as one of Putin's chief inquisitor, a lowlife named Bystrikin, the Head of Investigative Committee, has a residence permit in the Czech Republic, owns a company there and real estate in Bohemia, and keep their funds abroad. If the most vicious persecutors and violators of civil rights and their family members are denied the privilege of travel to the EU and the USA and of having assets there, then the Putinist state would disintegrate as the only glue that holds it together is the privileged consumption of the top level nomeklatura and of the Muscovite Thieving Class that is affiliated with it
The Pussy Riot case can also become another reason to move faster toward suspension of the Russian Federation's voting rights at the Council of Europe
The final thought on the "verdict": I am fairly confident that the case will be go before the European Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg where the Putinista state would get a ceremonial whipping.
References:
The European Convention on Human RightsThe Constitution of the Russian Federation
