TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Pussy Riot says no place for Putin at G20
The two best known members of Russian punk group Pussy Riot Saturday called on Australia to withdraw its invitation to President Vladimir Putin to attend this yearâs G20 summit
Change Size
T
he two best known members of Russian punk group Pussy Riot Saturday called on Australia to withdraw its invitation to President Vladimir Putin to attend this year's G20 summit.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, in Sydney to speak at a festival, spent 22 months in jail after staging a protest performance in a Moscow cathedral in 2012.
'We think that this person has no place at the G20,' Alyokhina told a packed Sydney Opera House audience through an interpreter.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said this week that calls for Putin to be excluded from the G20 talks in Brisbane in November given the situation in Ukraine were weighing on his mind. 'It's not a decision which Australia really has a right to make unilaterally,' he told reporters on Friday.
The two Pussy Riot women were convicted over their performance critical of Putin in a Moscow cathedral in 2012.
Speaking at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, the women said the situation in Russia was so repressive they would not now be able to repeat their cathedral performance.
'Unfortunately it wouldn't be even one second of our performance,' said Alyokhina, saying a planned performance in Sochi during the Winter Olympics earlier this year was cut short by authorities.
