From
International Herald
Tribune
In a criminal case testing the accepted boundaries of artistic expression in
Russia, a court on Monday convicted a museum director and a curator for
inciting religious hatred when they organized an exhibition of paintings and
sculptures that, to many, ridiculed the Russian Orthodox Church.
The court, however, rejected the prosecutor's appeal to sentence them to
prison and instead fined them the equivalent of $3,600 each, ruling that the
exhibition was "openly insulting and blasphemous."
The case against the exhibition, entitled
Caution! Religion, has
deeply divided Russia's religious and artistic communities ever since it
opened briefly in January 2003, provoking alternate charges of censorship
and animosity to religious believers. The verdict Monday satisfied neither
side entirely.
Yuri Samodurov, director of the museum, which is named after the Soviet
dissident and human rights advocate Andrei Sakharov, said he was relieved by
the punishment, though not by the court's ruling. He said he had gone to
court with his prescription medicines, assuming that he would immediately be
imprisoned.
Aleksandr Chuyev, a member of the lower house of Parliament who played a
role in pressing prosecutors to bring criminal charges against the museum,
agreed that the verdict would set a precedent, but one he considered
healthy.
He said the case had established the legal foundation for prosecution of
other exhibitions, as well as of pornography, films and other works that
offend the faithful. The people and the authorities now understand that
religion and the feelings of believers should not be touched on, They
should understand that their rights end where the other person's begin.
One of the artists, Anna Mikhalchuk, who exhibits under the name Alchuk, was
acquitted on Monday. She said the verdict effectively erased the separation
of church and state in today's Russia. I am afraid the formulation of the
court's ruling will be used as a precedent for the authorities. It
practically crosses out Russia on the list of secular nations."
The works, some of which are still on the museum's Web site at
www.sakharov-center.ru,
addressed spiritual and political aspects of the Orthodox Church, whose
influence over politics, if not society generally, has grown since the
Soviet Union collapsed 15 years ago. One sculpture depicted a church made of
vodka bottles, a biting allusion to the tax exemption that the church
received in the 1990s to sell alcohol.
Update:
Missing
7th April 2008
Anna Mikhalchuk, a 52-year-old feminist poet and
artist who works under the name Alchuk left her home in the western
Berlin district of Charlottenburg on the afternoon of 21 March 2008 and
has not been seen since, German police said in a statement. She has
lived in Berlin since 2007, when her husband, Mikhail Ryklin, a
philosopher, accepted a post at the city's Humboldt University.
Police have combed a lake and gardens near her apartment and turned up
no evidence of foul play so far, but Ryklin told The New York Times he
feared that she was targeted. There were religious fanatics who
really hated her, said Ryklin. He said it was not easy for German
police to imagine that someone could be targeted for their artistic
activity, because they think, said Ryklin, It can’t happen here.
Vinci's Christ's Last Supper. The display was ruled a gratuitous and
aggressive act of intrusion on people's innermost beliefs, a judge said.
The French judge in the case ordered that all posters on display should be
taken down within three days. The association which represented the church
was also awarded costs. 
They
came without song or chants. Instead their hands grasped firmly to a
message, one they want to make quite clear. Pornography and sex shops in
general are bad for the community, says Rick Young, who's leading up the
nutters at a new store in Nassau County, Florida. Certainly we hope that
this business will decide to move else where, close it's doors and move out.
Move out of our county quite frankly, 