RUSSIA-PUSSY/RIOT-PUNISHMENT-ADVICE

Moscow, August 18 (Interfax) – Protodeacon Andrei Kurayev, professor at the Moscow Spiritual Academy, has advised the convicted Pussy Riot activists how to get a softer sentence.

“The entire sentence is based on a very shaky foundation: the allegation that the punk group participants hate all Orthodox Christians and Orthodox faith in general. Alleging a motive in a person’s action, if the person denies this motive, means claiming to play the role of God, because only God can see what’s in a person’s heart… However, the Khamovnichesky court decided that it knows better and it can look not only at faces, but also at hearts,” Father Andrei said on livejournal.com on Saturday.

Kurayev believes the Pussy Riot activists could express their true attitude to Christianity by stating their position on the action taken by the Ukrainian movement FEMEN, whose activist sawed down a cross in Kyiv on August 17.

“The moment of truth has come. A Pussy Riot supporter carried out a protest in their support in Kyiv. The protest involved the sawing down of a cross, which was placed there in memory of victims of Stalin repression,” Father Andrei said, adding that the incident occurred just before August 18, the day when Orthodox Christians remember victim of terrorism and Stalin repression.

“What FEMEN have done in Kyiv is clear and 100% disgrace. Its purpose is very clear: by this act FEMEN calls on ‘all healthy societal forces to relentlessly remove from people’s brains old religious prejudices, which serve dictatorship and prevent the development of democracy and women’s freedom.’ That means that the Moscow feminists will get a chance to win an appeal in the Moscow City Court,” Kurayev said.

“To achieve that they just have to call a disgrace a disgrace. That way they can prove that they don’t hate the social group called Orthodox Christians,” Kurayev said.

[RU EUROPE EEU EMRG POL PRO REL]

16:46:14 EET-2