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Earlier this week, police arrested rapper Pablo Rivadulla, known as Pablo Hasel, 32. He hid in a university in Catalonia to avoid imprisonment.
In 2018, P. Hassel received almost 30 thousand. Fine of two euros and two years in prison for incitement to hatred and dignity.
Hasel called the former king of Spain a “drunken tyrant” and a “mafia commander” and praised the terrorist group ETA, which was seeking to separate the Basque Country from Spain. The rapper called the national police officers “murderers” and accused the civil guard of torturing and killing the migrants.
Scanpix / SIPA Photo / Protest against the arrest of Pablo Hasel
Following Hasel’s arrest on Tuesday, protests broke out in several Spanish cities, including Barcelona, Valencia and Lleida. There have been clashes between protesters and officials, with dozens arrested and injured.
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More last week in 200 leading figures of Spanish culture, including actor Javier Bardem and director Pedro Almodóvar, have signed an open letter in which they express their solidarity with Hasel and call for action, reports The Guardian.
“The persecution of rappers, Twitter users, journalists, culture and the arts for exercising their freedom of expression has become constant,” the letter says.
AFP / “Scanpix” nuotr./Pablo Haselis
For its part, the Spanish government has announced plans to change the law so that “excessive speech in an artistic, cultural and intellectual context” does not become prison.
A government spokeswoman said she wanted to “provide a much more secure framework for freedom of expression.”
Three years ago, the NGO Amnesty International said that the law prohibiting the “cult of terrorism” had a terrifying effect on satire: people were now beginning to fear alternative opinions or controversial jokes.
Under article 578 of the Penal Code, people found guilty of “worshiping terrorism” or “humiliating victims of terrorist crimes or their families” can be imprisoned, punished or prevented from working in the public sector.
According to the article, Def Con Dos singer César Strawberry was sentenced to prison in 2017 for joking on Twitter that ETA would give the king a “cake bomb” on his birthday, writes The Guardian.
Scanpix / SIPA Photo / Protest against the arrest of Pablo Hasel
Rapper Valtonyc was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for sharing songs online that worship terrorism, insult the monarchy and threaten violence against politicians. In 2018, he fled his sentence to Belgium.
Valtonyc was punished for the words “to be scared, as there are (scared) policemen in the Basque Country”, “the king has a meeting in the town square, with a rope around his neck.”
One of the most controversial is the case of the student Cassandra Vera. She was sentenced to 12 months probation for “making fun of victims of terrorism” when she joked on Twitter about the murder of the Spanish prime minister. In 1973, ETA planted a bomb in his car.
Eventually, the court reversed the verdict: stating that Vero’s conduct was morally reprehensible, but that the lower court’s verdict was disproportionate.
Condemned anti-Semitism
A recent video of Le Marea has also sparked ire among the Spanish. It includes a gathering of neo-fascists in Madrid last week, during which a young woman falsely claimed that Jews had created communism to pit workers against each other.
“Our most important duty is to fight for Spain, to fight for Europe, which is now weak and has been eliminated by the enemy. The enemy is always the same, even if he covers himself with different masks: a Jew, ”says the woman in the video.
The Spanish Federation of Jewish Communities has declared such statements “unacceptable” in a democracy, urging prosecutors to launch an investigation. Madrid prosecutors said they did so on Tuesday morning, writes The Guardian.
Barcelona prosecutors have announced that they are investigating the Vox campaign ahead of the Catalan regional elections this weekend.
The organization, which unites more than 300 mosques, claims that the Vox party’s social media campaign #StopIslamization (left. stop Islamization), including a video mixing news about Muslims and the extremist attack of 2017, is defamatory to Muslims.
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