News from Nowhere bookshop hosts readings by staff before customers join in reciting the band's Moscow cathedral prayer

The sentencing in Moscow of three members of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot - Maria Alyokhina, 24, Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22 – to two years in a penal colony  after being found guilty of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" provoked protests around the world, and Liverpool has been no exception.

The sentencing followed an incident in which the band performed a protest prayer in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in the Russian capital, calling on the Virgin Mary to 'chase Putin out'. Russian President Vladimir Putin has come under widespread criticism after the sentencing. 

In Liverpool, News From Nowhere, the radical, feminist and community bookshop on Bold Street, was the venue for a reading of defence statements by the trio, in which they denied being motivated by hostility to religion, but said they wished to highlight links between the Russian Orthodox Church's leadership and the Putin regime.

The readings were performed by two members of the staff and a friend, who wore the band's trademark balaclavas. Staff and customers joined in reciting a translation of the prayer which Pussy Riot had performed in the cathedral.

Sal, one of the staff of the bookshop, which is both a women's collective and a workers' co-op, said:

It was great to be part of a world-wide day of protest, action and solidarity with the three members of Pussy Riot who were being sentenced in court at the same time as we read out their testimonies at the bookshop.

The fact that the three women have been sentenced to two years in prison for singing a song not only highlights the levels of repression and censorship in Russia, it also shows that feminism is still a dirty word and a threat to the patriarchal hegemony.

She added:

Women being silenced by the state is nothing new but the current clampdown on women's rights, gay rights and human rights generally in Russia is seriously worrying. Pussy Riot have helped to shine a spotlight on the current state of Russian society under Putin, but sadly they have had to sacrifice their own freedom in doing so.

News from Nowhere is a doughty survivor of the heyday of 'alternative bookshops' in the early 1970s. You can read a summary of its history here. They are on Facebook here.

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