Sherry Chandler » Freedom of Expression?
Freedom of Expression?
An editorial in today’s online Washington Post should be disturbing to any artist. It recounts an act of vandalism that took place in Moscow in 2003. Vandals broke into a gallery that is part of the Andrei Sakharov museum and destroyed a number of paintings that they found offensive.
The exhibition, titled “Caution! Religion,” was intended, the curators explained, to get people to focus on the danger of religious fanaticism and prejudice in a country where only Russian Orthodoxy has any firm legal status. The vandals were acolytes of the Russian Orthodox Church. After a brief investigation, charges against them were dropped on the grounds that the exhibition was indeed offensive. Instead, museum administrators were put on trial. Last week a judge found the museum’s executive director, Yuri Samodurov, guilty of “inciting hatred”; also convicted were a colleague and an exhibiting artist. All were fined…The case also illustrates the degree to which Russian justice is once again becoming beholden to the whim of authority. [Boldface added by SC.] The constitution guarantees freedom of expression and religion and forbids censorship — none of which dissuaded prosecutors from demanding that museum administrators be held criminally accountable.
So, why should we care what happens in Russia now that its leader is a soulmate to our own? A question that answers itself perhaps.
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