The State of Artistic Freedom 2019 – Whose Narratives Count?
On March 26, 2019, Freemuse, the world’s leading independent international organization advocating for and defending freedom of artistic expression, launched its annual report, The State of Artistic Freedom 2019: Whose Narratives Count?
Freemuse’s annual State of Artistic Freedom report serves up a total of 139 pages of content, all based on research assembled from monitoring, documentation, and examination of violations of artistic freedom and other legal and policy developments worldwide.
The report concludes that 2018 was a bad year for freedom of speech and expression, noting “many governments fail to respect freedom of artistic expression […] and in cases where violations were triggered by non-state actors — such as religious authorities, fundamentalist groups and social media companies — state authorities are yet to fulfill obligations in regard of prevention.”
This year’s report presents 673 documented cases of artistic censorship and repression that occurred in 80 countries throughout the 2018 calendar year. “Intolerance and violence against artists and all who have the right to freedom of artistic expression has been widespread,” the report says, and “the culture of silencing artists has been continuously present in different forms in countries of both the global north and south.”
Freemuse’s research concludes that nine countries — Belarus, Egypt, Georgia, Israel, Nicaragua, Russia, Spain, Turkey, and the United States — “are found to have used anti-terrorism and anti-extremism legislation and measures against artists in 2018.”
