Pussy Riot

 Courtesy of Wire

 Pussy Riot members (from left to right) Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova show the court’s verdict from within a glass-walled cage today in a Moscow courtroom.

Democracy Now! reports that members of feminist punk group Pussy Riot have been sentenced to two years in prison for staging the reported anti-Putin protest in an Orthodox church.  The three women were kept in a cage during a trial widely decried for lack of separation between church and state, and as a symbol of political intolerance for free speech and feminism - feminism, a term the judge wouldn't even allow discussion of, during the trial.

"The girls' actions were sacrilegious, blasphemous, and broke the church's rules," said Judge Marina Syrova while sentencing.

During the described performance protest, the group sang the following lyrics, the English translation shared on Democracy Now! by feminist punk musician JD Samson with the groups Le Tigre and MEN:

Virgin Mary, Mother of God, put Putin away
Put Putin away, put Putin away
Black robe, golden epaulettes
All parishioners crawl to bow
The phantom of liberty is in heaven
Gay-pride sent to Siberia in chains
The head of the KGB, their chief saint,
Leads protesters to prison under escort
In order not to offend His Holiness
Women must give birth and love
Virgin Mary, Mother of God, become a feminist
Become a feminist, become a feminist.

Here is a video of Pussy Riot in the performance protest they are now sentenced to two years in prison for, titled Punk Prayer: