A few hours ago, Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova and Masha Alekhina were walking down the street in Sochi when they were detained by the police for alleged hotel theft. Along with several activists and journalists who recently arrived to the Winter Olympics site, they were roughly shoved into vans. “We are not resisting arrest; they are beating us,” Masha tweeted. The activists made sure to document their arrest in detail. According to first hand reports, Radio Freedom’s Anastasia Kirilenko was among the eight arrested, along with local activist Semyon Simonov who provided legal aid for the immigrant laborers that built Olympic sites (and was already detained and questioned earlier) as well as David Khakim, who was sentence to 30 hours of community service yesterday in Sochi for his illegal one-man protest in support of the jailed environmental activist Evgeny Vitishko.
“They told us we are suspected of theft,” Nadya told the Guardian over the phone. “Of course there has been no theft.” Since the Nadya and Masha arrived on Sunday with plans to carry out a Pussy Riot action and perform their new protest song “Putin Will Teach You How to Love the Motherland,” they had been followed and were questioned for hours be security forces yesterday, she says. She tweeted the above photo of Masha inside a police van. Nadya tweeted that they were questioned without a lawyer and that the cops wrung her arms, threw her to the ground and dragged her facedown through the station.
Everyone was released a few hours later straight into a mob of journalists. Verzilov just tweeted the following photo of Nadya and Masha leaving the station in balaclavas. “Putin will teach you how to love your motherland. Putin will teach you how to love. This is what the Olympics do,” Nadya tweeted.
A police spokesman just confirmed complaints of alleged theft to Rain TV, but it sounds rather stretched. Only two years ago, when Pussy Riot activists were arrested, tried and convicted for “hooliganism with the intent to incite religious hatred” — a ludicrous charge, but a ludicrous charge that had at least some relationship to their actual action of performing an anti-Putin protest song inside a church. But this is a time when protestors are arrested for “disturbing public order,” “jay walking” and causing a riot cop “intolerable pain” by throwing a lemon at his armor. Nadya and Masha were pardoned by President Putin earlier this year, immediately decrying the action as “disgusting” “cynical” “propaganda” and conducting new illegal actions.
Despite “kicking out” Nadya and Masha from Pussy Riot with a stern LiveJournal post, we’re hoping that Katya and the rest will voice their support, despite the fall out of these two women’s sudden mainstream fame and perceived betrayal of Pussy Riot’s anti-capitalist, feminist values. They seem as dedicated as ever to perform their protest actions and with this is just what sleepy Sochi needs, as protests have been few and completely crushed by the authorities so far. And speaking of “disturbing public order,” the amount of press gathering near the police station is reportedly causing a near blockade of traffic.
During her arrest, Nadya tweeted: “The song ‘Putin Will Teach You How to Love the Motherland’ is dedicated to Bolotnoya prisoners” [who Masha and Nadya quoted during their Amnesty International appearance in New York], “the corruption of the Olympics, ecologist Vitinko and the crushing of freedoms in Russia.”
Stay tuned. Action forthcoming.
(Photos: @djavik, @gruppa_voina, @tolokno)
