Contemporary challenges to freedom of expression 2016, para. 49
Paragraph- Paragraph text
- Government repression of artists of all sorts persists. For instance, the mandate holder has sent communications to the Islamic Republic of Iran pertaining to the detention of a graphic artist who made a drawing in protest against the banning of family planning, the detention and flogging sentence of human rights defenders for collections of poetry, the detention of two musicians and a film-maker for "propaganda against the State" and "insulting the sacred" through the production of underground music, and the detention of individuals for appearing in a video protesting a State ban on women watching sports in stadiums. The Egyptian Penal Code provides a basis for restricting artists in its article 98, which subjects to penalties "whoever exploits and uses the religion in advocating and propagating orally, in writing or by any other method, extremist thoughts with the aim of instigating sedition or division, or disdaining and contempting any of the heavenly religions or prejudicing national unity and social peace". Qatar detained a poet for criticizing the Amir of Qatar and praising the Tunisian revolution in poems. Saudi Arabia imposed the death sentence, later commuted, on a poet for apostasy. In Cuba, an artist was detained on the basis of a charge of intending to release two pigs named after Raul and Fidel Castro during an artistic demonstration.
- Legal status
- Non-negotiated soft law
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Means of adoption
- N.A.
- Topic(s)
- Equality & Inclusion
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Person(s) affected
- Activists
- Women
- Year
- 2016
- Paragraph type
- Other
- Reference
- SR Freedom of Opinion, Report to the UNGA (2016), A/71/373, para. 49.
- Paragraph number
- 49
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