Moscow court to make public verdict on arts exhibition organizers.

MOSCOW, July 12 (Itar-Tass) - Moscow City's Taganka district court is
due to make public a sentence on organizers of a scandalous exhibition The
Forbidden Art'2006 - the former director of the Andrei Sakharov Centrer,
Yuri Samodurov, and the former chief of the newest artistic trends
department at the Tretyakov Arts Gallery, Andrei Yerofeyev.
In the process of court deliberations earlier, the public prosecutor
asked the judges to consider the two defendants guilty of an offense under
an article of the Criminal Code on "fomenting strife or hatred and
humiliating human dignity with the aid of one's occupational position."
The punishment requested by the prosecutor for both men is three years
in a penal colony settlement.
Both Yerofeyev and Samodurov said they do not recognize any guilt on
their part and the defense asked the court to acquit them.
The Forbidden Art'2006 exhibition was held at the Andrei Sakharov
Center in Moscow from March 7 through March 31, 2007. It showed the works
of art, which had been turned down by other Moscow museums and galleries
for one reason or another.
Some of the exhibits concerned religion and their authors combined
Christian symbols or sacred objects with the 'objects of everyday routine'
or mass culture - Mickey Mouse, the black hole, obscene graffiti, etc.
All the exhibits were hidden behind a false wall and one could see
them only through special small slits in it.
Officials of the Russian Orthodox Church expressed indignation with
the exhibition asked the state agencies "to give an adequate legal and
moral assessment to it", while the Narodny Sobor /People's Council/
Orthodox Patriotic movement filed a complaint with the Prosecutor's Office.
Pending the acceptance of the complaint, a criminal case was
instituted back in 2007 and charges were issued to the organizers of the
exhibition.
The indictment says: "The exhibition displayed the works that
contained the images humiliating and insulting for the Christian faith and
the citizens espousing it."
For Yuri Samodurov, this is not the first criminal case.
A similar case was instituted against him in 2004 in connection with a
display titled Beware of Religion, held in January 2003.
In March 2005, the Taganka district court recognized a provocative and
insulting character of the display. It sentenced Samodurov and Sakharov
center expert Lyudmila Veselovskaya to penalties of 100,000 rubles each.
In the run-up to the reading-out of the sentence on the Forbidden Art'
2006, Russian Culture Minister Alexander Avdeyev said the court
persecution of Samodurov and Yerofeyev was ungrounded.
"I personally didn't like that exhibition," he said.
"Some people are scolding the organizers in tougher terms or even don'
t stretch a hand out to them and some find it quite appealing," Avdeyev
said.
"Assessment to this should be passed at the level of morality and
ethics rather than judiciary judgments," he said adding that Samodurov and
Yerofeyev did not commit any trespasses.
"This was the instance of an outrage and I don't think the Criminal
Code can be applied here," Avdeyev said. "The attempts to do this have
always been a failure here."

.Vietnamese Communist Party's Sec Gen to visit forestry academy in
Petersburg.

St PETERSBURG, July 12 (Itar-Tass) - Secretary General of Vietnam's
Communist Party, Nong Duc Manh, who is making an official visit to Russia,
will spend Monday in St Petersburg.
He arrived here Sunday afternoon and spent the rest of the day touring
the city's most important sights and attended a performance of the Swan
Lake at the Mikhailovsky theater.
Officials at the press service of the St Petersburg government the
business part of Nong Duc Manh's visit envisions a trip to the Forestry
Academy, which he graduated from.
He studied at the department of economics and administration.
It is expected that he will hand to the academy a set of equipment for
fitting out an advanced computerized class.
Also, he will have meetings at the Smolny Institute where the city
government offices are located.
His discussions of cooperation will involve Deputy Governor Mikhail
Osseyevsky who substitutes for Governor Valentina Matviyevnko when she is
away on vacations.
As an item traditional for such visits, Nong Duc Manh will go to the
Piskaryovka memorial cemetery where several hundred thousand people were
buried in communal graves during the Siege of Leningrad from the end of
1941 through to the beginning of 1944.
Monday night, Nong Duc Manh will leave for Hanoi.
-0-kle


Delete & Prev | Delete & Next