Russian punks Pussy Riot imagines joyous cops in post-arrest song

NEW YORK: Russian punks Pussy Riot put out a new song on Tuesday imagining pro tester embracing, gay-friendly police officers after four band members were arrested for storming the field during the World Cup final.

“Track About a Good Cop” marks a new musical direction for the noise-loving feminist rockers as they turned to the beats and synthesisers of house music for a biting satire on police officers.

In the video, four Russian police officers – three men, one woman – undergo a transformation from standing sternly at attention in the snow to dancing flirtatiously as if at a nightclub.

“Girls and boys/Sugary streets/ Cops are kissing under the clouds,” runs the refrain, which like the video carries homoerotic undertones.

“Me and the cop/Me and the cop/We have turned from enemies into a duo.”

Pussy Riot in a statement called the song “a utopian dream about alternative political reality in which instead of arresting activists and putting them in jail, cops are joining activists.”

Pussy Riot said it was envisioning a “world where cops got rid of homophobia, stopped the war on drugs and actually understood that it’s much better to be joyful and nice to people.”

The punk rockers also put out a list of demands including freedom for its four members jailed for 15 days for interrupting Sunday’s globally broadcast final between France and Croatia.

Pussy Riot also urged the release of hunger-striking filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, arguably Russia’s most prominent political prisoner, who was handed a 20year sentence over terrorism charges.

The group demanded as well that Russia stop breaking up street demonstrations and end actions against opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

The video is available at https:// youtu.be/q1v7u1GacSU.

Pussy Riot shot to notoriety after briefly staging a musical protest against President Vladimir Putin in 2012 from inside a central Moscow church.

Group members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina were released after serving 22 months of their twoyear sentences.

The band saluted a judgment Tuesday by the European Court of Human Rights which said that Pussy Riot members had been subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment and deprived a fair trial over the 2012 episode. — AFP