On Friday 23rd Might, the Irish-language rap trio Kneecap headlined London’s Extensive Awake music competition at Brixton’s Broxwell Park. Attended by 20,000 followers, this marked the Belfast group’s first stage efficiency because the announcement that the Metropolitan police charged one of many group’s members with terrorism offences. Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh (stage identify Mo Chara), is scheduled to seem at Westminster Justice of the Peace’s Court docket on Wednesday 18 June after allegedly displaying a flag in assist of proscribed Lebanese group Hezbollah at a Kentish city occasion in November 2024. Ó hAnnaidh’s courtroom look will happen one week earlier than the Belfast group’s scheduled—though now unsure—look on the Glastonbury 2025 competition.
Kneecap’s vociferous rhetoric on Israel’s alleged genocide in Gaza. and the ensuing fees introduced by the Metropolitan police, have unsurprisingly spurred debates concerning the place traces should be drawn on the fitting to freedom of expression. Substantively, many supporters of the Belfast group have probed whether or not Ó hAnnaidh—as a controversial musical artist—is an appropriate goal for potential prosecution beneath part 13 of the UK’s Terrorism Act 2000. Over 100 artists have signed an open letter to assist Kneecap’s freedom of expression and ‘register opposition to any political repression of creative freedom.’ The rap group have themselves labelled the costs a type of ‘political policing’ and ‘a carnival of distraction’ away from their substantive protestations in opposition to Israeli atrocities.
