While 2012 may be remembered as the year that controversial Russian punk collective Pussy Riot were jailed, gained support from the music industry and humanities activists, eventually leading to the release of one of the three incarcerated, there are other musical genres in other parts of the world that continued to be persecuted.
If you thought you’d experienced prejudice as a fan of heavy metal, then this latest news should put things in perspective as The Age reports that a metal musician has fled Iran, seeking asylum in Australia after facing threats to his life for being part of a band.
The 28-year-old man is currently detained at Manus Islands fleeing his native country where executions are “as common as eating a piece of cake,” and authorities regularly persecute live music performances, including the man’s own underground Iranian metal outfit for whom he was drummer.
The man, who refuses to be named, tells the paper how his final decision to flee the country came after an unauthorised concert led to the arrest of 60 heavy metal fans, as well as music teachers, being arrested and jailed.
It’s just one instance of many in the country, where hundreds of music fans are regularly arrested due to Iran’s strict restrictions on music, performance, and dance.
“Heavy metal is completely prohibited and illegal in Iran,” says the Manus Islands detainee, “and as I mentioned before because of the religion and misjudgments, it’s known as ‘Evil Music’,” the 28-year-old wrote in an email to The Age. “Heavy metal is completely prohibited and illegal in Iran… it’s known as ‘Evil Music’.”
“Government officials and the religious [authorities] who are in charge will arrest you and take you to Intelligence Department and anything can happen to you then,” the drummer had to give up his instrument and consider felling after ‘Evil Music’ fans were increasingly being targeted by authorities.
“In an underground concert more than 60 fans were arrested, charged and locked up,” he says of the aforementioned raid. “Players were taken to Intelligence. Two teachers of mine were arrested also.”
It became the catalyst for his self-imposed exile, he sold his drums, changed his number, relocated and severed ties with friends. “I deleted every history of my music from my life because of my fear of being arrested by the government who were intent on stopping this music,” he writes.
“During this time six musicians that I knew were arrested in their training place. After that no one contacted each other, even on Facebook.”
The 28-year-old heavy metal refugee eventually fled his home and made it to Australia, where he is currently detained at the Manus Islands detention facility, one of the new centres for offshore processing the Australian Government controversially announced back in August of last year. By November 2012 the relocation of asylum-seekers began to the island, located off-shore of Papua New Guinea.
Iran is not the only country in the Middle East that has actively targeted music fans, last March, Iraqi youths who identified themselves as part of the emo subculture became the target of ‘death squads’ patrolling the country, threatening they’d kill men seeing to defy traditional cultural and religious beliefs.“I deleted every history of my music from my life because of my fear of being arrested by the government.”
Flyers were distributed around Baghdad and other smaller cities threatening death on ’emo kids’ unless they cut their hair, stopped wearing the clothing of ‘devil worshippers’ and stopped listening to metal, emo, and rap music. Saying if they refuse, “God’s punishment will come down upon you.”
Colonel Mushtaq Taleb Muhammadawi, director of the Interior Ministry’s community police, has previously issued strong public statements on emo youth, saying “research and reports on the emo phenomenon has been conducted and shared with the Ministry of Interior which officially approves the measures to eliminate them.”
“The Ministries of Education and Interior are taking this issue seriously and we have an action plan to eradicate them,” he continued. “I will be leading the project myself and we have the necessary permits to access all schools in the capital.”
Music culture and its subsets – such as punk, emo, and metal – has acted as a symbol of social freedom in the troubled country following countless years of conflict and warfare, but authorities in Iraq, Iran, and all over the Middle East continue to take a hardline stance, seeing social expression instead as being culturally, and worse, religiously insubordinate.
