29 Oct 2012 | Russia
MOSCOW. 29 October 2012 (INDEX).
Earlier this month a Moscow court freed Ekaterina Samutsevich, one of three imprisoned women from Russian punk band Pussy Riot but upheld the two-year jail term handed down to her bandmates. Samutsevich, Maria (Masha) Alekhina and Nadezhda (Nadya) Tolokonnikova were convicted of hooliganism in August after staging a “punk prayer” in a Moscow cathedral to protest the Russian Orthodox Church leader’s support for the president Vladimir Putin ahead of the Russian presidential election. The band’s conviction came amid a wider crackdown on dissent, which has included tighter controls on media, moves towards internet censorship and the harassment and arrest of opposition activists and civil society.
Freed Pussy Riot member Ekaterina Samutsevich
Samutsevich — also known as Katya — believes everyone has social and political responsibility, and that artists have the power to make “people understand problems they couldn’t see before.” And exercising that responsibility is how Katya got in trouble.
In a week where her comrades were sent to harsh prison camps in remote Russian regions, Samutsevich gave this exclusive telephone interview to Elena Vlasenko, Index on Censorship’s Russia correspondent, and assured her Pussy Riot is here to stay.
INDEX: You were given a suspended sentence on appeal after you alone switched lawyers. The judge’s decision hung on the fact you were ejected from the cathedral before being able to perform but your friends remain in prison. Are the rumours about a split in the group true?
Ekaterina Samutsevich: All the talk about divisions in Pussy Riot are the authorities’ attempt to spin the situation. We definitely didn’t expect my release on probation, [we] thought the sentence would not change. Anyway, this is a victory for all of us … one person out of three is released, or at least on a suspended sentence. Nadya and Masha hugged me and congratulated [me] on this.
INDEX: Why did you switch lawyers? Who disliked your previous lawyer Violetta Volkova most — you or the judge?
ES: Prisoners sometimes change lawyers several times per trial, and that’s ok. I don’t really want to emphasise it, like some media do, that is why I prefer not to comment on the issue.
INDEX: How did you say goodbye to Nadya and Masha? Are you managing to stay in touch?
ES: We wished all the best to each other. We used to write each other letters almost every day before their departure to the penal colonies, but now it’s hard to communicate.
Feminist punk band Pussy Riot
INDEX: You filed an appeal to European Court of Human Rights saying your prosecution and detention violated article 10 of the European convention — free expression — and article 3 — prohibition of torture. Why article 3?
ES: We consider ourselves innocent and the very fact of our detention illegal. The court obviously wanted us exhausted. We were woken up every day at 6am and taken to the court at about 9am, no matter what time the proceedings started. Sometimes we had to wait several hours in a room under convoy before we finally got to the courtroom. The same waiting happened after the proceedings. We spent several hours under convoy waiting for a car, and another hour — in front of the pretrial prison gate. We entered the cell at about 1am. The next day we had to get up at 6am; every day of the proceedings would be the same. Before the proceedings we had to come to the court every morning to familiarise ourselves with the case … We spent two and a half weeks on this schedule.
As a rule, if a case isn’t big — normally criminal cases run to tens of volumes, and ours was only seven — the court holds proceedings once a week. But not this time. From our perspective, the rush was deliberate so that we were too tired to understand what was going on during the proceedings. I was so exhausted once we had to call the ambulance. And the doctors had to give Masha an injection as her blood sugar level dropped dramatically and she was awfully dizzy.
It was torture for us.
INDEX: One could see how physical and rude the bailiffs were to you after the judge ruled. Why?
ES: They were extremely rude and very rough while escorting us to the car: they twisted our arms, for example, maybe so that we couldn’t wave to our supporters. This rudeness is typical towards any person in handcuffs in Russia.
INDEX: Other members of Pussy Riot who remain in hiding told Index on Censorship if they could turn back time they would still repeat the punk prayer. Would you?
ES: Nobody expected the arrests. Punk prayer is not a crime, besides, we successfully left the cathedral without being detained. Of course, we would repeat our prayer: we can’t stay silent … But we would definitely sing the song to the end, the guards didn’t let us that time. I personally would prefer to stay in the cathedral for all the song’s duration, not just 15 seconds.
INDEX: From your perspective what event changed Russia, making it once again the kind of country where controversial trials, like yours, are possible — Putin’s presidency, the Chechen war, the 1996 elections? What was the point of no return?
ES: I don’t think there was a point at all. There are many factors, and one of the most important one is the authorities’ policy towards culture and education. The prerequisites appeared long ago — there was no freedom of expression in the Soviet era — but the situation began worsening sharply when Putin came to power.
Members of Pussy Riot performing in Moscow’s Red Square
People don’t have opportunities to learn about modern art, culture and civil politics. They think politics is a number of high ranking people who sit in their offices. Citizens don’t see themselves as part of policy making, because they simply don’t know they have the right and means to become part of the process. The lack in education leads to the lack of civil protest culture. As a result they play by the rules dictated by authorities.
The only solution is education and self-education, which is becoming more possible because of the internet. The internet is indeed our rescue – as a source of education. The second most important thing is a will to unite, like the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender activists or ecologists recently did. It is important not to count on one leader who will save everyone. There won’t be one, and there shouldn’t be. Pussy Riot is against leaders, we stand for more complex structures of civil communities.
INDEX: Western artists and intellectuals supported you more vocally than those in your own country. Has Pussy Riot suffered for the growing political indifference of Russia’s intellectuals and the artistic community?
ES: Pussy Riot does pay for this. But not only for intellectuals and people of art, but for the whole country’s political indifference. But we should take political pressure and censorship into account. We don’t have art communities which are 100 per cent independent of the authorities.
INDEX: Pussy Riot stands for political art. Does that mean you believe artists have a responsibility to speak out?
ES: Yes, of course, but it is not just artists that have social and political responsibility. Every person is responsible for seeing what surrounds them and for expressing concerns over it. Citizens are provided with power by the constitution and they have a right to influence the situation in a country. That’s what they should do, especially artists. They have the power and knowledge to communicate serious issues in clear, efficient ways which make other people understand problems they couldn’t see before.
INDEX: When will you achieve your goals and stop performing? What is the perfect future for Russia – one where Pussy Riot is no longer needed?
ES: This will happen years from now; now the government is only intensifying repressions. The current power should change the model of its behaviour. People should form a strong and active civil society, which will influence and dominate the authorities — the opposite of what we have now… So we will continue fighting.
29 Oct 2012 | Europe and Central Asia, News and features, Religion and Culture, Russia
MOSCOW. 26 October 2012 (INDEX).
Earlier this month a Moscow court freed Ekaterina Samutsevich, one of three imprisoned women from Russian punk band Pussy Riot but upheld the two-year jail term handed down to her bandmates. Samutsevich, Maria (Masha) Alekhina and Nadezhda (Nadya) Tolokonnikova were convicted of hooliganism in August after staging a “punk prayer” in a Moscow cathedral to protest the Russian Orthodox Church leader’s support for the president Vladimir Putin ahead of the Russian presidential election. The band’s conviction came amid a wider crackdown on dissent, which has included tighter controls on media, moves towards internet censorship and the harassment and arrest of opposition activists and civil society.
Pussy Riot member Ekaterina Samutsevich sits in a glass cage at a court room in Moscow, August 2012. Maria Pleshkova | Demotix
Samutsevich — also known as Katya — believes everyone has social and political responsibility, and that artists have the power to make “people understand problems they couldn’t see before.” And exercising that responsibility is how Katya got in trouble.
In a week where her comrades were sent to harsh prison camps in remote Russian regions, Samutsevich gave this exclusive telephone interview to Elena Vlasenko, Index on Censorship’s Russia correspondent, and assured her Pussy Riot is here to stay.
INDEX: You were given a suspended sentence on appeal after you alone switched lawyers. The judge’s decision hung on the fact you were ejected from the cathedral before being able to perform but your friends remain in prison. Are the rumours about a split in the group true?
Ekaterina Samutsevich: All the talk about divisions in Pussy Riot are the authorities’ attempt to spin the situation. We definitely didn’t expect my release on probation, [we] thought the sentence would not change. Anyway, this is a victory for all of us … one person out of three is released, or at least on a suspended sentence. Nadya and Masha hugged me and congratulated [me] on this.
INDEX: Why did you switch lawyers? Who disliked your previous lawyer Violetta Volkova most — you or the judge?
ES: Prisoners sometimes change lawyers several times per trial, and that’s ok. I don’t really want to emphasise it, like some media do, that is why I prefer not to comment on the issue.
INDEX: How did you say goodbye to Nadya and Masha? Are you managing to stay in touch?
ES: We wished all the best to each other. We used to write each other letters almost every day before their departure to the penal colonies, but now it’s hard to communicate.
INDEX: You filed an appeal to European Court of Human Rights saying your prosecution and detention violated article 10 of the European convention — free expression — and article 3 — prohibition of torture. Why article 3?
ES: We consider ourselves innocent and the very fact of our detention illegal. The court obviously wanted us exhausted. We were woken up every day at 6am and taken to the court at about 9am, no matter what time the proceedings started. Sometimes we had to wait several hours in a room under convoy before we finally got to the courtroom. The same waiting happened after the proceedings. We spent several hours under convoy waiting for a car, and another hour — in front of the pretrial prison gate. We entered the cell at about 1am. The next day we had to get up at 6am; every day of the proceedings would be the same. Before the proceedings we had to come to the court every morning to familiarise ourselves with the case … We spent two and a half weeks on this schedule.
As a rule, if a case isn’t big — normally criminal cases run to tens of volumes, and ours was only seven — the court holds proceedings once a week. But not this time. From our perspective, the rush was deliberate so that we were too tired to understand what was going on during the proceedings. I was so exhausted once we had to call the ambulance. And the doctors had to give Masha an injection as her blood sugar level dropped dramatically and she was awfully dizzy.
It was torture for us.
INDEX: One could see how physical and rude the bailiffs were to you after the judge ruled. Why?
ES: They were extremely rude and very rough while escorting us to the car: they twisted our arms, for example, maybe so that we couldn’t wave to our supporters. This rudeness is typical towards any person in handcuffs in Russia.
INDEX: Other members of Pussy Riot who remain in hiding told Index on Censorship if they could turn back time they would still repeat the punk prayer. Would you?
ES: Nobody expected the arrests. Punk prayer is not a crime, besides, we successfully left the cathedral without being detained. Of course, we would repeat our prayer: we can’t stay silent … But we would definitely sing the song to the end, the guards didn’t let us that time. I personally would prefer to stay in the cathedral for all the song’s duration, not just 15 seconds.
INDEX: From your perspective what event changed Russia, making it once again the kind of country where controversial trials, like yours, are possible — Putin’s presidency, the Chechen war, the 1996 elections? What was the point of no return?
ES: I don’t think there was a point at all. There are many factors, and one of the most important one is the authorities’ policy towards culture and education. The prerequisites appeared long ago — there was no freedom of expression in the Soviet era — but the situation began worsening sharply when Putin came to power.
Members of Pussy Riot performing in Moscow’s Red Square
People don’t have opportunities to learn about modern art, culture and civil politics. They think politics is a number of high ranking people who sit in their offices. Citizens don’t see themselves as part of policy making, because they simply don’t know they have the right and means to become part of the process. The lack in education leads to the lack of civil protest culture. As a result they play by the rules dictated by authorities.
The only solution is education and self-education, which is becoming more possible because of the internet. The internet is indeed our rescue – as a source of education. The second most important thing is a will to unite, like the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender activists or ecologists recently did. It is important not to count on one leader who will save everyone. There won’t be one, and there shouldn’t be. Pussy Riot is against leaders, we stand for more complex structures of civil communities.
INDEX: Western artists and intellectuals supported you more vocally than those in your own country. Has Pussy Riot suffered for the growing political indifference of Russia’s intellectuals and the artistic community?
ES: Pussy Riot does pay for this. But not only for intellectuals and people of art, but for the whole country’s political indifference. But we should take political pressure and censorship into account. We don’t have art communities which are 100 per cent independent of the authorities.
INDEX: Pussy Riot stands for political art. Does that mean you believe artists have a responsibility to speak out?
ES: Yes, of course, but it is not just artists that have social and political responsibility. Every person is responsible for seeing what surrounds them and for expressing concerns over it. Citizens are provided with power by the constitution and they have a right to influence the situation in a country. That’s what they should do, especially artists. They have the power and knowledge to communicate serious issues in clear, efficient ways which make other people understand problems they couldn’t see before.
INDEX: When will you achieve your goals and stop performing? What is the perfect future for Russia – one where Pussy Riot is no longer needed?
ES: This will happen years from now; now the government is only intensifying repressions. The current power should change the model of its behaviour. People should form a strong and active civil society, which will influence and dominate the authorities — the opposite of what we have now… So we will continue fighting.
27 Oct 2012 | Africa, South Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa
Rural people travelled hundreds of kilometres to voice their objections at South Africa’s parliament about a new bill that threatens to impose a separate and unequal legal system on them — just to hear that their submissions are being blocked.
The Traditional Courts Bill uses apartheid-era Bantustan jurisdictions to reinstate a legal system that deprives black rural South Africans from citizen’s rights enjoyed by their urban counterparts. Some 22 million people are affected – almost half of the country’s population.
Women are not usually allowed to speak in traditional courts – male relatives talk on their behalf
The bill empowers traditional leaders, who are unelected and predominantly male, to act as judicial officers in disputes. Penalties can be imposed that range from banishment to hard labour.
Critics have pointed out that the bill continues a colonial practice that violates the principle of the separation of powers by concentrating executive, legislative and judicial functions in the hands of traditional chiefs.
Chiefs dispense executive governmental functions, including allocating land and access to water. Customary law is understood as “living law” developed by communities and is therefore not written down. The bill will allow chiefs inordinate say when applying customary law while also appointing them as presiding officers in such legal matters.
Rural women are particularly adversely affected because they are usually not allowed to speak in traditional courts, and therefore cannot defend themselves. Instead of entrenching women’s right to speak this bill exacerbates this situation by allowing others to speak on women’s behalf. In practice these “others” will be male family members – frequently the same people who have in interest in depriving a woman of her house or land after her husband’s death.
Traditional leaders have been using their influence in the ruling African National Congress (ANC) to drive the bill. The drafters from the department of justice and constitutional development consulted only traditional leaders in the drafting process, and not those most affected – rural people.
South Africa’s constitution obliges its parliament to hear the public’s views about legislation. Parliament held public hearings across the country in April and May this year where many rural people resoundingly rejected the bill.
The hearings were flawed, as traditional leaders arrived with large entourages and tried to prevent community members, especially women, from speaking in some cases. There have been suggestions that many rural people were not informed of the hearings while those who attended were frequently misinformed about the implications of the bill.
The public hearings culminated in September in Cape Town, the seat of the South African parliament. Again, rural women and men travelled from far-flung areas to tell the select committee on security and constitutional development how the bill would exacerbate current power abuses by traditional leaders.
The committee received almost 70 written submissions while more than 20 oral submissions were heard over a four-day period. The vast majority of the submissions demanded the scrapping of the bill and the drafting of a completely new bill
However, it emerged on Wednesday (24 October) that the committee has decided to only consider the submissions made by two government departments and the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), a constitutional watchdog body.
The committee chairperson, Tjetha Mofokeng (ANC), told committee members that he had instructed justice department officials to compile a “working document” for them. On his instruction, the document was limited to summaries of the submissions from the justice department, the department of women, children and people with disabilities and the SAHRC.
Mofokeng, supported by ANC committee members, questioned “the relevance” of the 60-plus submissions by non-state representatives.
Opposition party parliamentarians objected, pointing out that the overwhelmingly negative response from rural participants has to be taken into account.
Dennis Bloem from the Congress of the People (COPE) argued:
Chair, I want to put it clearly, it will be an insult to all the other organisations that have made inputs here to say that it is not relevant. We have spent taxpayer’s money to have a whole week of public hearings to listen to what the people have said. That is the essence and the reason for having public hearings.
The Alliance for Rural Democracy, a group of 30 civil society organisations including the 50,000 member-strong Rural Women’s Movement, called Mofokeng’s actions “brazen” and “deeply insulting”. The alliance called on parliament to clarify its position on the unconstitutional stance taken in the committee, which amounts to silencing citizens’ voices.
Christi van der Westhuizen is Index on Censorship’s new South African correspondent
24 Oct 2012 | Digital Freedom, News and features
The more we live our lives online, the greater the temptation for governments and private companies to spy on us. Padraig Reidy highlights the dark side of our increasing dependence on digital communications
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