In Krasnodar, Cossacks tore posters with Christ quotations, advocates of forgiveness of Pussy Riot assert

In the course of the rally "For Faith, Kuban and Fatherland", held in Krasnodar on March 31, several activists decided to hold solo pickets in the same area calling to forgive the Pussy Riot performers. They were stopped by the rally securities, who tore into pieces the posters with quotations from the Bible, the activists said. The authorities and Cossacks refused to comment their actions.

"In total, we organized four pickets," the activist Alexei Samolyanov, who was present at the pickets as a correspondent of the "Grazhdanskiy Golos" (Civil Voice) newspaper, explained to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent. "People came to the rally to condemn the girls who had performed in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, but all of them have very quickly forgotten that the Orthodox religion teaches us to forgive in the first place. And we decided to remind people about it by our four pickets."

Each of the four solo picketers held a piece of drawing paper with written tests, including quotations from the Bible: "Jesus taught us to forgive", "Judge not, that ye be not judged" and "Who among you is without sin, let him first cast a stone at her". The fourth poster quoted the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill, who said that "Orthodox believers cannot go out to demonstrations."

After some 10-15 minutes, the guards of the rally in Cossack uniform came up to the picketers. The latter say that before that the guards had been instructed by an employee of the Department for Interaction with Public Associations, who later refused to present himself.

"I was standing with the poster 'Who among you is without sin...'," Alexander Artyukh, a solo picketer, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent. "After 10 minutes, three Cossacks came up to me and tore up the poster." In doing so, the Cossacks, according to Artyukhov's version, in obscene words demanded from him to stop the action.

The above Department of the Administration of the Krasnodar Territory refused to comment on the situation to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent. The press service of the Kuban Cossack Army was also not able to comment on the behaviour of Cossacks, referring to preoccupation.