John Legend will play for a sold out crowd in Bahrain. An award-winning performer, Legend is also one of the entertainment industry’s most outspoken champions for equality and social change. He is affiliated with more than 30 human rights and humanitarian organizations, including UNICEF, the Red Cross, the Global Fund, and the International Rescue Committee, and has participated in university campus visits to discuss social, economic, and personal rights.
Given his affiliation with this commendable work, one cannot help but wonder why he would chose to perform in Bahrain, where human rights abuses are a daily occurrence.
On February 14, 2011, a week after Legend announced he would join Sade on her Bring Me Home tour, half the population of Bahrain flooded the streets to demand self-determination and respect for human rights. The government responded with brutal tactics to silence this dissent. Unionized laborers were fired from their jobs for joining the protests, while health care professionals endured torture and faced politically-motivated criminal charges for discussing the horrific injuries inflicted upon protesters by the government. From athletes to lawyers, students to nurses, the government used media attacks, military trials, home raids, arbitrary detention, and even extrajudicial killings to target anyone who dared speak out against the state.
By the end of 2011, when Legend was preparing to participate in a benefit for the United Way of Tampa Bay, the Government of Bahrain had arrested thousands, injured hundreds, and killed dozens.
In the years since the uprising began, Bahrain has only intensified its campaign against dissent. Just last week the head of the European-Bahraini Organization for Human Rights was subjected to horrific torture for his activism, while the leader of the largest political opposition group, Al Wefaq, has been in prison for two months for his work. The government has increasingly used the revocation of citizenship to target activists and has routinely detained children as young as 10-years-old for allegedly participating in political gatherings. Two American citizens have also been imprisoned by this key U.S. ally.
As George Washington University professor and academic Marc Lynch wrote in an open letter to the performer, it is important for John Legend to “apply [his] strong political convictions at home to a very similar set of problems abroad, and reconsider this performance, or speak out about what [he] see[s].” For Legend to perform in Bahrain amidst ongoing human rights abuses would be a disservice to the thousands of Bahrainis who are routinely targeted by their government. If he were to cancel in protest of these human rights violations, it would, by contrast, send a strong message to the Government of Bahrain that such abuses have real consequences.
If the show must go on, Legend should take the opportunity to visit the more than 3,000 political prisoners languishing in Bahraini prisons or meet with the hundreds of victims of torture who have been left physically and emotionally scarred by their government.
Last week, when John Legend and musician Common accepted the Oscar award for Best Original Song for Selma’s “Glory,” Legend’s words were evocative. “Selma is now. The struggle for justice is now,” he said. While the artist was referring to racism in America, his words ring equally true for Bahrain.
Regardless of whether Legend chooses to perform, he has the opportunity to speak for justice and equality in Bahrain and he should take it.
