Students in the Place de la République in Paris during the demonstration to protest the murder of Professor Samuel Paty, last October.CHARLES PLATIAU / Reuters
The year of the pandemic, a 2020 marked by confinements and the closure of public life, leisure and culture, was difficult for artists.
Not only because many of them were unable to earn a living from their work;
Also, and this is what has most surprised the Freemuse organization, because it is the year in which they have collected more cases of violation of artistic freedom.
There are 978 in 89 countries, and show a catalog of attacks on freedom of expression: from damaged or destroyed works to murder, through censorship, travel ban, threats, prosecution or imprisonment.
“We see alarming trends.
In 2020, the right of artists to create has been further restricted, ”said Srirak Plipat, Freemuse's CEO, during Wednesday's presentation of the report.
The State of Artistic Freedom
2021.
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The investigation by Freemuse, a Danish-based organization that acts as a consultant for UNESCO, concludes that, while they were in the "limbo" of confinement, artists were even more subject to censorship and to be accused of crimes that led to them to jail.
"This year's report illustrates an increase in the misuse of blasphemy, anti-terrorism legislation and measures against Covid-19 as a pretext to silence the dissident voices of artists and their works," said Plipat during the presentation online, as part of the Re: Writing the Future festival, held in Berlin.
In 2018 the report analyzed 673 cases of attacks on freedom of artistic expression in the world.
In 2019 there were 711. The work collects that in the year of the pandemic 17 artists were killed in six countries (11 of them in Mexico);
82 were jailed;
133 detained and 107 processed.
By region, Europe is the one with the most cases: 26%.
The countries with the most attacks on artistic freedom are Turkey (72), France (40), Russia (31), the United Kingdom (25), Belarus (22) and Poland (12).
Plipat did not mention Spain during the presentation, but the report does include two cases of imprisonment, which according to Alberto González Pulido, a consultant representing the organization in Spain, correspond to the cases of the Mallorcan rapper Valtònyc - who fled to Brussels in 2018 after being convicted for the lyrics of his songs - and also rapper Pablo Hasél.
"In the last five years, Spain has sentenced 14 rappers to prison terms for glorifying terrorism through the lyrics of their songs," the study says.
The other 12 are members of the La Insurgencia collective, who did not enter prison after seeing their sentences reduced from two years to six months.
Russia and Belarus are the only states in the European region to which the organization dedicates a separate chapter as “countries of concern”.
The rest are Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Cuba, Egypt, India, Iran, Kenya, Kuwait, Nigeria, Turkey, Uganda and the United States.
The report assures that at least 33 artists have been arrested, tried or imprisoned for crimes related to terrorism in the world, offenses that are used "to oppress opposition and minority voices."
Most of these cases have occurred in Turkey.
But there are many more reasons or pretexts to prevent artistic freedom.
Religion is one of the most cited.
The report highlights that 40 artists suffer legal consequences for "hurting religious feelings."
One of them is the Nigerian gospel singer Yahaya Sharif-Aminu, who was sentenced to death for sharing a song on WhatsApp that the authorities considered blasphemous against the Prophet Muhammad.
"The death of the French professor Samuel Paty after having used a cartoon of Muhammad by
Charlie Hebdo
in his class exemplifies that the supposed insults to religion still pose an extreme threat to human life," says the study.
In 2020 there were also 98 attacks on LGTBI artists.
More than half (52%) occurred in countries that do not have laws criminalizing homosexuality.
In those that do, such as Russia, the report highlights that 91% of the attacks were perpetrated by government authorities.
Among the documented cases of homophobic attacks in 2020 is that of South African dancer and choreographer Kirvan Fortuin, who was stabbed in the chest and died on the way to hospital.
Also featured is Sarah Hegazi, an Egyptian writer who was arrested in September 2017 for waving a rainbow flag at a concert.
After spending three months in jail, during which she was raped, she emigrated to Canada.
But it was marked by what happened and committed suicide in June of last year.
Visual artist Shurooq Amin recounted her experience last year in her country, Kuwait, during the report presentation. The government banned an exhibition of his works as pornographic. It featured images of bikini-clad women and men drinking alcohol, which is illegal in Kuwait. "Several men entered and began to take down the pictures from the gallery walls," he said by videoconference. The artist has hardly returned to work. He assures that, although it has not been convicted, the pressure is continuous. No gallery now dares to exhibit his work and his name is "on a black list".