A Russian performance artist stripped naked and nailed his testicles to a Red Square cobblestone in protest against the Kremlin’s crackdown on political rights.<\/p>\n
Eye-watering footage shows artist Pyotr Pavlensky sitting naked outside Lenin’s Mausoleum in Moscow, Russia, before police covered him with a blanket.<\/p>\n
The state-run RIA Novosti news agency said Pavlensky was taken to a police station after being treated in a central Moscow clinic.<\/p>\n
The Saint Petersburg-based artist said in a statement posted on the Grani.ru website that he was trying to draw attention to Russian society’s development into a ‘police state’.<\/p>\n
Russia marked its annual Police Day holiday on Sunday.<\/p>\n
It is not the first time the 29-year-old has resorted to dramatic methods of protest.<\/p>\n
He has previously sewn his lips together to demonstrate against the jailing of two female members of the Pussy Riot punk band who staged an anti-Kremlin performance inside Moscow’s main cathedral in 2011.<\/p>\n
He was also arrested after wrapping his naked body in barbed wire outside a Saint Petersburg government building in May.<\/p>\n
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