One of my colleagues here at the VOA, corruption correspondent Jeffrey Young, drew my attention today to a new video by Russian “opposition rock” group, Pussy Riot–its first English-language single–titled “I Can’t Breathe.”

It’s a tough video to watch:  Singers Masha Alekhina and Nadya Tolokonnikova, dressed in the uniforms of Russia’s special riot police, are buried alive, one shoveful of black dirt at a time, while the following words  are read aloud:

“…Please just leave me alone. please please, don’t touch me. Do not touch me…I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe…”

They were the final words of Eric Garner, it will be recalled, the father of six children who died during an arrest by New York City police last July.

Amateur video shot by a bystander at the time of the arrest shows the unarmed Garner being forced to the ground by several officers, one of whom had his arm bent around Garner’s neck in a classic chokehold, a controversial method of subduing violent suspects that was banned by the New York City Police Department in 1993.

Garner was pronounced dead in a New York hospital a short time later.  His death–and the release of the video which showed him to be unarmed and nonviolent–sparked protests nationwide and drew renewed attention to the ongoing issue of police violence in the United States, particularly against people of color.

Demonstrators protest to demand justice for the death of Eric Garner, at Grand Central Terminal in the Manhattan borough of New York, December 9, 2014. The death in New York of Garner, a 43-year-old father of six, and the police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, of Michael Brown, have highlighted strained relations between police and black Americans and rekindled a national debate over race relations. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri

Garner’s death was later ruled as a homicide caused in part by the chokehold.  However, in early December, a jury cleared the police officer of any crime and the U.S. Justice Department announced it would conduct its own investigation into the incident.

“But the Pussy Riot music video goes well beyond the streets of New York,” Young points out.
“It speaks clearly to the oppression and smothering of Russians by the state and it also reflects the situation faced by government opponents in many other countries.”

On their YouTube page, Pussy Riot dedicates the video to Garner and to “all those from Russia to America and around the globe who suffer from state terror – killed, choked, perished because of war and state sponsored violence of all kinds – for political prisoners and those on the streets fighting for change.”

And it adds, “We stand in solidarity.”