Residents of Kuban ask to commute sentence for Novorossiysk women for their dancing near WWII memorial

In the Krasnodar Territory, a group of residents has started collecting signatures under the online petition to commute the sentence for three young women, who danced near the WWII memorial museum "Malaya Zemlya" (Small Land) in Novorossiysk.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on April 24, social groups on the Internet disseminated a video record, in which the young women of the Novorossiysk dance studio performed a twerk dance near the WWII memorial complex "Malaya Zemlya". The law enforcement authorities treated the dance as "disorderly conduct" and arrested the dancers for 10-15 days.

At night of April 27, the website "Change.org" posted an online petition addressed to Veniamin Kondratiev, the Acting Governor of Kuban, Yuri Chaika, the Russian General Prosecutor, and Alexander Bastrykin, the Chairman of the Investigating Committee of the Russian Federation (ICRF). The authors of the online petition ask to commute the sentence for female residents of the hero city.

"The act committed by them is undoubtedly not good, primarily because they chose the place not suitable for such actions. However, it is clear that they committed it without malice. Their act was committed as simply stupid and unconscious. In this case, the punishment in the form of arrest bears no pedagogical function; it represents a doubtful occasion for local officials to do a favour for their superiors, and it simply breaks the future lives of young women and leaves indelible stains on their reputations and their personal files," the petition notes.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.