Pussy Riot Members Nominated for Time Person of the Year 2012 Award
The plight of Pussy Riot, who saw three members of their art/protest/punk collective jailed this summer after performing an anti-Vladmir Putin song in a Moscow cathedral in February, grabbed international headlines and garnered plenty of support from the music community. Now, three members -- the two that remain imprisoned and the one who was given probation -- have been nominated for Time magazine's 2012 Person of the Year honors.
While Yekaterina Samutsevich was freed on probation, since her lawyers argued that she hadn't even strapped on her guitar when the collective was booted from the cathedral, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina remain incarcerated with two-year sentences.
The ladies are paying a steep price for political expression, and despite some sympathy from the Russian premier, Putin refuses to commute their sentence, saying they threatened the moral foundation of Russia. Tolokonnikova and Aloykhina were sent to remote prison camps far from Moscow, where conditions are supposedly incredibly harsh. Their lawyers tried to argue to keep them nearer to Moscow, since they have young children, but that request was not granted.
Time's list of nominees comprises 38 influential people, and Pussy Riot are up against Barack Obama, Jay-Z and Psy, among other public figures.
The magazine's editors will announce the winner on Dec. 21. The people's choice winner, determined by votes cast on the Time website, will be revealed a week prior. Click here for more information.