Pussy Riot members tweet police-wagon selfie while detained in Sochi
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Pussy Riot members tweet police-wagon selfie while detained in Sochi

Miles Klee—
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Free Pussy Riot - Demo Berlin | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

The activist punks have been pulled in for questioning three times in three days.

Never much for steering clear of trouble, Nadya Tolokonnikova and Masha Alyokhina of the infamous Russian political punk outfit Pussy Riot ran afoul of law enforcement while preparing to debut a new protest song, “Putin Will Teach You to Love the Motherland,” at the Sochi Winter Olympics.

They were picked up near the Church of the Archangel Michael, perhaps because police feared a sequel to their performance at Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior, which landed them in prison for almost two years (they were released in December under a special amnesty program that they brazenly criticized).

Alyokhina noted that they were beaten and bruised despite a lack of resistance, then interrogated without lawyers. But the pair maintained Twitter access, sending updates, as well as some selfies sure to become iconic in the struggle against Russian censorship.

The two women were taken into custody along with eight others while walking toward the Sochi seaport; some were fellow activists who had been denied spectator passports to attend Olympic events, though authorities cited suspicion of a felony—the hotel where Pussy Riot was staying had apparently been burglarized. Tolokonnikova tweeted, however, that she and Alyokhina had been captured and questioned on the previous two days as well, for seven and ten hours, respectively.

In all three cases, they were eventually released.

“We’ve been detained like anybody who’s made an attempt to criticize authorities during the Olympics,” Tolokonnikova told the Wall Street Journal. Though we’d be hard-pressed to think of someone whose dissent is quite so colorful and courageous.

H/T Gawker | Photo by Grüne Bundestagsfraktion/Flickr

Miles Klee

Miles Klee

Miles Klee is a novelist and web culture reporter. The former editor of the Daily Dot’s Unclick section, Klee’s essays, satire, and fiction have appeared in Lapham’s Quarterly, Vanity Fair, 3:AM, Salon, the Awl, the New York Observer, the Millions,  and the Village Voice. He's the author of two odd books of fiction, 'Ivyland' and 'True False.'

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