Free Pussy Riot — all of them

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Today, one member of the Russian punk group Pussy Riot, Yekaterina Samutsevich, was freed, but the convictions of the other two, Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, were upheld — and they’ll now spend the rest of their two-year sentences at a prison camp.

And not for hooliganism, as alleged, but for daring to challenge the authoritarian rule of Vladimir Putin:

The case against Pussy Riot, a feminist punk collective formed to challenge the government of Vladimir Putin, has laid bare the crackdown under way as Russia’s powerful leader seeks to overcome growing opposition to his rule.

Arrested for singing an anti-Putin “punk prayer” inside a Moscow cathedral that caters to the governing elite, the three members of Pussy Riot maintain they were carrying out a political protest. The prosecution argued that the goal of their February performance was to offend Russian Orthodox believers.

It doesn’t matter whether you find the form of the protest appropriate. (And perhaps they could have found a different venue for their protest, but the struggle against authoritarianism often requires such public displays of dissent.) This is about freedom in the face of tyranny.

Pussy Riot deserves our support. And all three deserve to be free.