 |
| Photo: Internet, singer Pablo Hasél being arrested. |
In a previous article I spoke about who and what are political prisoners. I argued that they are altruists who fight for a cause and they may be violent or pacific actors. Whether they are violent or not doesn’t determine whether they are political prisoners. Throughout history various writers and, also in the modern world, singers have found themselves imprisoned. The persecuted political activists who sing and end up in prison are usually accused of an endless list of crimes, some of them violent others are not. Though in reality this does not matter much. From the Spanish State to Russia they are accused of various types of crimes when the regime believes it needs to justify the repression and persecution of musicians.
The musician is like the pamphleteer of old, who instead of writing a tract to be circulated clandestinely, he writes and sings songs for the message to not only reach further but to persist for longer. And just like writers, the regimes fear them, they repress and threaten them and unfortunately in some cases they buy them off. When we talk of musicians as political prisoners we are not talking of drunks or drug users, sex offenders etc. who became famous for their misdeeds, but rather political activists who at the same time earned their bread and butter singing.
In the West the persecuted artist is usually associated with non-Western regimes such as the famous case of the feminist punk group in Russia, Pussy Riot, who protested against Putin’s regime, the closeness of the Orthodox Church to him and the homophobic legislation in force in the country. But the reality is that the persecution of artists is now as it always has been: international.
In the USA, many names stand out in the world of politically committed music, amongst them Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. Guthrie travelled throughout the country singing to workers and poor farmers displaced by the Dust Bowl. His guitar was emblazoned with the slogan, “This machine kills fascists”. Seeger also carried out political campaigns and both were hounded by the FBI, with Seeger ending up in front of the Committee for Un-American Activities, like many other singers, some of them going into exile in other countries.[1] Amongst those hounded was Paul Robeson. Robeson was a giant in the music world, and in a literal sense, measuring 1.91 m, with a bass-baritone voice. In the 1950s they took his passport and banned him from leaving the USA, which forced him to carry out a concert by telephone to miners in Wales. He recorded an album of that concert Freedom Train, a reference perhaps to the Underground Railroad that escaped slaves used to flee to the north of the USA before the civil war.
When they finally gave him his passport and permission to travel, Robeson did not seek out the quiet life, but rather travelled the world singing, supporting organisations and struggles such as the Aboriginals in Australia and the Maori in New Zealand, amongst others. There is a famous video of him singing his most recognised song, Ol’ Man River and also Joe Hill, about the life of the trade unionist executed by firing by the US government in 1915. In the video Robeson goes to the building site of the Sydney Opera House and in a political act the workers downed tools to listen to him.[2] Throughout his life Robeson’s attitude to music and the struggle can be summed up in his own phrase regarding his support for the republicans in the Spanish civil war. "The artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative."
And like him there were thousands in Latin America, from the Mejia Godoy persecuted by the Somoza dictatorship, and others such as Daniel Viglietti in Uruguay, and of course Victor Jara, jailed, tortured and executed by the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. Many artists in all of Latin America chose exile, as did others under the Franco dictatorship in the Spanish State and uncountable artists from the African continent such as Hugh Masekela in South Africa or Fela Kuti in Nigeria.
Today the persecution of musicians that raise their voice continues. In June 2004, the Colombian police arrested the musical group Pasajeros as they came off the stage of a concert organised by trade unions. They spent six months in detention accused of rebellion and following their release they had to go into exile.[3]
More recently there are the two emblematic cases in the Spanish State, the rappers Pablo Rivadulla Duró a.k.a Pablo Hasél and José Miguel Arenas Beltrán known by his artistic name Valtònyc. The latter’s crime was the music he composed. Nothing more. Of course, the state didn’t accuse him of composing, but rather invented a series of crimes, glorification of terrorism, advocacy of ideological hatred, incitement to violence and insults to the Spanish crown.[4] The lyrics to his songs are provocative to the fascist right in the Spanish State, but the fascists’ defence of the Francoist dictatorship does not result in anyone being convicted. Valtònyc defended himself saying:
I do not support ETA, what I am into is taking the piss out of fascists who still live in the times of Aznar and accuse women who abort of being members of ETA”. When asked about whether he regrets it, given the stiff sentence for his lyrics he insists that “in Spain the only terrorism there is, is legal terrorism, which is the fear of losing your job, that they take your house and you remain in a state of job insecurity they subject us to. I don’t advocate that, I am anti-capitalist…
Violence is parents juggling at traffic lights in order to feed their families. People of all ages queuing in soup kitchens.[5]
The other case is of Pablo Hasél sentenced for similar crimes. In Hasél’s case Amnesty International, an NGO, which is rather cautious when not timid in its declarations, does not hesitate to describe the case as a blow to freedom of speech and asked the Spanish government to amend its legislation.[6]
When we talk of political prisoners we are also talking of musicians, poets, artists both in the distant past as in the modern times of the 21st Century. It is not surprising, as Bertolt Brecht the German dramatist, exiled by the Nazi regime put it “Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it” i.e. the artist also struggles to change society. As the Basque poet Gabriel Celaya put it Poetry is a weapon loaded with the future.
Now, as in the past, artists continue to swell the ranks of political prisoners. Victor Jara described himself as a musical worker and as Pablo Milanés put it in his song.
Pity the singer of our time
who does not risk his strings
so as to not risk his life.
They risk their lives, they go into exile, they are murdered and they also go to jail, like the insurgents, the strikers, the youths who throw stones at the police, all those who do no not bend the knee.
[1] The Jacobin (22/11/2020) The FBI’s War on Folk Music. Alexander Billet.
[2] See.
[3] Alexandra Duque Torres (2019) Entendieron la música como una apuesta de resistencia.
[4] Público (20/02/2018) Estas son las frases y versos por los que Valtonyc irá a prisión tres años y medio. Alejandro Torrús.
[5] Público (24/02/2017) Valtonyc defiende que no hay ningún tipo de “violencia” en sus canciones. María Serrano.
[6] AI (16/02/2024) España: La sentencia del Tribunal Europeo de Derechos Humanos sobre el caso de Pablo Hasél, un golpe a la libertad de expresión. EUR 41/7720/2024.
⏩ Gearóid Ó Loingsigh is a political and human rights activist with extensive experience in Latin America.
No comments