MUMBAI: A member of Russian female punk band Pussy Riot was freed on 10 October unexpectedly from prison on Wednesday vowed defiantly hours later that the group’s protest actions would continue after six months of imprisonment.
But the Moscow court upheld prison sentence for her two other bandmates charged over a raucous cathedral protest against Vladimir Putin, who said they had got the jail terms they deserved.
“We are not finished, nor are we going to end our political protest,”
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Yekaterina Samutsevich told CNN. “We have to act in such a way that they do not learn about concerts ahead of time and arrest us.”
Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, walked free from Moscow City Court but the appeal judge who suspended her two-year sentence said fellow band members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina should serve out their terms.
“I have mixed feelings. I’m happy, of course, but I am upset about the girls,” Samutsevich, said outside the court, where she was greeted by applause and whistles from a crowd of about 150 people in the rain.
Her lawyer told the court that Samutsevich had not performed the ‘punk protest’ near the altar of Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral in February because she had been stopped and led away before it took place.
As per reports, Samutsevich said efforts by the Russian authorities to divide the group would not work and that her “negative” attitude toward President Vladimir Putin and his “mega authoritarian project” remained unchanged.
Samutsevich’s father Stanislav said he would take his daughter away for a time to rest but that when she returned to Moscow “she will fight for the rest of the girls.”
Defense lawyers, relatives of the women and rights activists including the chairman of Putin’s own presidential human rights council, Mikhail Fedotov, criticized the split ruling.
“All three of those convicted in this case could certainly be given suspended sentence and that would be right,” Fedotov said, according to Interfax news agency.
In emotional statements from a courtroom cage during the appeal hearing, the band said they had not meant to offend the faithful but criticized Putin, who foes say has cracked down on dissent since starting a new Kremlin term in May.
Samutsevich, 30, Maria Alyokhina, 24, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, were convicted in August of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred for performing illegally at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in February.
In an interview aired on 7 October to mark his 60th birthday, Putin defended the sentence: “It is right that they were arrested and it was right that the court took this decision because you cannot undermine the fundamental morals and values to destroy the country.”
Calls to free the women, who were given two-year prison sentence, came in from world figures from Madonna to Myanmar democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, but Samutsevich’s release was a big surprise.
Samutsevich said she had been treated well in prison and that Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova were “holding up very well” despite being “very, very upset” at being separated from their young children.
“They congratulated me, they were very happy for me and they wished me all the best,” she said.
Samutsevich noted she didn’t know how things would play out, but stressed that it was important the Russian people understood there was no religious hatred or animosity driving their protests.
“This was a political action aimed at the authorities, at the convergence of religious and political powers and I want people to understand that,” she said.
