Pussy Riot Coming to Capitol Hill

Members of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot are coming to Capitol Hill tomorrow morning for a press conference in the halls of Congress.

Nadya Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, who served more than a year behind bars for performing an anti-Putin song in an Orthodox church, will be the guests of Helsinki Commission chairman Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and commission member Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.).

Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina, who will answer questions at a press conference with the lawmakers, are making the rounds in Washington to lobby for “prompt, full, and ongoing implementation” of Cardin’s Magnitsky Act, a 2012 law passed with strong bipartisan support that sanctions human rights offenders in Russia.

Sergei Magnitsky, a tax attorney, had uncovered large-scale fraud and theft within the Russian government. He was held 11 months without trial and died in 2009 — eight days before he would have had to have been released under law. Russian officials say he had a heart attack, but investigations have revealed he was tortured, beaten, and denied medical treatment.

“Pussy Riot is not a rock band, but rather a feminist punk protest group. They do not give concerts, but stage provocative performances in public locations, one of which led to the arrest of Ms. Tolokonnikova and Ms. Alyokhina on charges of hooliganism for which they served two years in prison. After experiencing firsthand the harsh and political nature of Russia’s judicial system, upon their release they immediately focused their advocacy work on those—like Sergei Magnitsky—who suffer and die all too often in Russia’s vast penal system,” Cardin’s office said in an announcement.

Pussy Riot has gotten support from both sides of the aisle, though not always mentioning their name.

“They throw the members of a punk rock band in jail for the crime of being provocative and vulgar and for having the audacity to protest President Putin’s rule,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) wrote of the Kremlin in a September Pravda editorial.

“PresO shld attack the ridiculous sentence given punk band members by Commissar Putin jurists. Nothing is wrong w free speech,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) tweeted in his shorthand style in 2012. “I reread PresO condemnation of sentencing of Russian punk group. But he condemn wrong authorities he shld attack commissar Putin the star.”

“I’m going to declaim from articulating their name and leave it to other sources,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said in a January speech on Russia.