As an American, some might say that I don’t have the right to criticize other countries’ judicial and penal systems. After all, we’ve got the black hole of Guantanamo Bay, where we’ve been holding prisoners for the last 10 years without any trial, without any charges even and, probably in most cases, without any evidence whatsoever (because if there was any evidence, we’d give them a trial). We are so far outside the realm of justice that we’ve got privately owned, profit making prisons. We’ve got Joe R. Piehole and Steven Seagal riding around in tanks and crashing down the walls of people’s homes. We’ve got cops who shoot innocent civilians all the time, and taze old men to death in retirement homes. So, it’s true, as an American, I can’t really talk.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova
But, as a human being, I sure as fuck can. What the Russian’s are doing in the case of Nadezhda Tolokonnikova is as wrong as wrong can be. Whether the Pussy Riot singer has “gone missing” as some papers have reported, or is “being held incommunicado” at the Russian authorities put it, the fact of the matter is nobody knows where she is and her husband and all of her supporters, which is millions of people around the world, are worried.
This is extremely uncool, and extremely unnecessary, on the part of the Russian authorities. They say they have up to 10 days before they are legally obligated to tell her husband where she is and that may be true, but it’s still wrong.
They could publicize her whereabouts tomorrow if they wanted, and end the mystery. There is only one reason not to do so, and that is that they are being assholes. Deliberately. Just because they can.
This case needs to remain in the limelight, in the forefront of public consciousness, until we get an answer. Because it’s really scary, and not right at all, that governments can just make people disappear.
