Yekaterina Samutsevich: Closing Statement at the Pussy Riot Trial

[Pabmusic]

...But whether the sentence was proportionate or not, I don't think it was about 'criminalising protest'. I don't see that you can claim that causing a public nuisance is justified as long as you are doing it as a protest. Otherwise you then have to have criteria for deciding which protests justify causing a public nuisance and which don't.

You are right: causing a public nuisance cannot be 'right' because you approve the cause. There will always be others who don't. We cannot individually be arbiters of the justifiability of such acts. It's all very well to laud peaceful direct action, but it only looks good in hindsight, when society has accepted the justice of the case. We can say Emily Davison's cause was just (1913 Derby - King's horse) because 'society' has ticked the 'like' box of history. In fact, we cannot imagine how anyone ever thought that women should not have the vote. But if she had been protesting against a refusal to reinstate slavery, we would not consider it 'just' or Emily a 'martyr'. More realistically, perhaps, she might have been protesting against government proposals for Irish home rule - we probably would be less sure what to think.

Was the damage to the Headingley pitch in 1975 justified because George Davis won a appeal against conviction in 2011?:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-13519771

It was about identification evidence and was one of a number of high-profile cases (Peter Hain, George Ince) that eventually led to a change in the law for the better. But I doubt that change came about because of the damage in Leeds.

[amateur51]

Is there any chance that the boat race will be abandoned for fear of such a protest happening again?

Now that would be a result