ATTACKS ON ARTISTIC FREEDOMS NEARLY DOUBLED WORLDWIDE IN 2015, SAYS REPORT
In 2015, attacks on artistic freedom and cases of censorship nearly doubled, according to the annual Freemuse report “Art Under Threat.” Freemuse, an independent international organization that champions freedom of expression for musicians, reviewed data on censorship from over seventy countries.
Last year saw a twenty percent increase in killings, attacks, abductions, imprisonments, and threats as well as a 224 percent increase in acts of censorship against artists. A total of 469 registered cases of violations against artists’ rights were recorded. Broken down, those cases consist of three artists who were killed, fifteen newly imprisoned, thirty-one people who were imprisoned in previous years but are still serving time, six abducted, twenty-four physically attacked, thirty-three persecuted or threatened, forty-two prosecuted, twenty-three detained—in addition to 292 acts of censorship.
The majority of violations were politically motivated. However, 2015 saw a rise in attacks due to religious militant extremism. Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Mali, Nigeria, and Somalia are among the countries where the report states extremism is “strangling artistic activities.”
Statistics show that the most frequently attacked art form is music, which is followed by film, literature, theater, visual arts, and dance. The November 13 Paris terror attack on the Eagles of Death Metal show at the Bataclan concert hall was the single worst attack on artistic freedom last year. Eighty-nine people were killed and ninety-nine injured. “The attack sent shock waves all over the world and had the immediate effect of many concerts and artistic events being canceled.”
The country with the most violations is China: The world’s most populous country tops Freemuse’s list with 146 overall violations. The majority of them are acts of censorship, which the report attributes to a list of 120 songs that the Chinese government blacklisted in August. Excluding censorship, following China, the countries with the most violations are Iran, Russia, Burundi, Syria, and Turkey.
Freemuse admits that the staggering number of registered violations may be a result of their improved documentation methods. The report states that “artistic freedom violations continue to be underreported in many countries due to lack of awareness, registration, political will, and reporting capacity.”
