Femen Protesters

Femen Protesters Demonstrate Topless in Paris

Original was uploaded on 2013-09-08

Members of the Ukrainian topless feminist group Femen protested across Europe on Thursday (August 29) against a recent police raid on their headquarters in Kiev, as authorities bid to close down the organisation.

Topless protesters gathered outside the Ukrainian embassies in Paris and Berlin, as well as other cities, and shouted slogans “Our body is our weapon – our boobs are our bomb”, while stamping on toy guns.

Femen have accused the Ukrainian police of planting explosives and a gun during a raid on their headquarters in Kiev headquarters on Tuesday (August 27) in a bid to close their organisation down.

The Femen group specialises in shock bare-breast appearances to dramatise women’s rights causes, mainly in the male-dominated hierarchies of Russia and its former Soviet allies.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin has particularly been a target for Femen’s protests since the prosecution of the Russian female punk group Pussy Riot last year.

A police statement in Kiev said a group of explosives experts were sent to Femen’s headquarters in central Kiev on Tuesday after an anonymous call. Objects resembling a World War Two pistol and grenade were found during a search, it said.

Officers at the scene said they had also found leaflets showing the profiles of Putin and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill pictured in snipers’ cross-hairs.

Femen activists denounced the police finds as plants.

Femen’s leaders and activists were questioned by police and the group’s headquarters was sealed off. No one was immediately arrested or charged.