Russian Migration Officials, Cossacks Disrupt Pussy Riot Play in Moscow Theater

A play about the trial against Russian punk rock band Pussy Riot was interrupted in Moscow on Sunday when migration authorities came to ask the Swiss theater director for his work documents. The Moscow Trials play by director Milo Rau tells the story of the most controversial cases of the last decade, including the trial against three female activists, who were convicted of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" for performing an anti-Putin “punk prayer” at Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral last February. Two of the group members, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, were sentenced to two years in prison, while another one, Yekaterina Samutsevich, had her sentence suspended. In the middle of the play, in which Samutsevich took part, the officials of the Russian Federal Migration Service entered the Sakharov Centre, staging the performance, and asked the Swiss director to show his work documents. Shortly after the migration officials left, the performance was interrupted for a second time when dozens of people wearing Cossack uniforms stormed the building in protest of the play’s content. Meanwhile, a police spokesman said the situation was “calm” and “no serious violations of the law have been registered.”

http://en.ria.ru/russia/20130303/179793039/Migration-Officials-Disrupt-Pussy-Riot-Play-in-Moscow.html
http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2139437
http://www.echo.msk.ru/blog/marat_gelman/1023568-echo/