A woman stripped down to reveal the message
huffpost.com: A woman stripped down to reveal the message "Stop Raping Us" in the blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag to protest Russian rapes at the Cannes Film Festival May 20. (Photo: VALERY HACHE via Getty Images)
A female protester was whisked away by security guards after she stripped on the red carpet of the Cannes Film Festival Friday to protest Russian rapes in the Ukraine war.
The unidentified protester was painted with messages, including one reading: “Stop raping us” in the blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag. As men in tuxedos and women in gowns streamed by, or watched, stunned, she began screaming, The Independent reported.
The protest unfolded just ahead of the premiere of director George Miller’s film “Three Thousand Years of Longing.”
A tweet identified her as an activist from SCUM, which apparently refers to the 1967 radical feminist SCUM Manifesto.
There have been reports of legions of rapes and other sexual violence committed against Ukraine civilians by Russian forces as a weapon of war.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last month that the particularly disturbing horrors in the town of Bucha were “not the random act of a rogue unit” but a “deliberate campaign to kill, to torture, to rape, to commit atrocities.”
On Tuesday Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivered an address to the festival via video link. He quoted from “The Great Dictator,” Charlie Chaplin’s film satirizing fascism.
“The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people,” Zelenskyy said. “And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.”
He added: “Again, then as now, there is a dictator. Again, then as now, there is a war for freedom. Again, then as now, cinema must not be silent.”
He received a standing ovation.
On Wednesday Ukrainian filmmakers at the festival were horrified by the warfare theatrics of a French fighter jet display to honor actor Tom Cruise and the film “Top Gun: Maverick,” Agence France Press reported.
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