Discrimination hotlines in both the Netherlands and Belgium have concluded that Dutch singer Sophie Straat did not discriminate when she asked “all white men to step back” during two of her recent performances.
Last month at the Best Kept Secret festival in Beekse Bergen, Straat — real name Sophie Schwartz — asked for space for women, queer people and people of colour in the “mosh pit”, an area in front of the stage where fans dance chaotically.
She made the same request on Monday during a performance in Ghent, Belgium.
The Dutch discrimination hotline Discriminatie.nl said it received hundreds of complaints but maintains that Straat’s comments do not amount to discrimination against white men based on their colour or gender.
“The call only concerned one short, one-off mosh pit for these groups,” said the hotline. “Therefore, visitors were not refused entry to the concert.”
Belgian authorities reached the same conclusion after receiving some 200 complaints following her performance in Ghent.
“Although the statement may be perceived as polarizing or offensive, in this context it must be seen as a symbolic and artistic expression,” a spokesperson for the Belgian discrimination hotline Unia told the Flemish broadcaster VRT.
“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 offend.”
Hate messages and death threats
Straat wrote on Instagram earlier this month that she has received “a wave of sexist, antisemitic hate messages and (death) threats, some more explicit and creative than others”.
She has also questioned where the left-wing media has been in all this, saying the public narrative is being controlled by the right.
The singer, who was raised in a Jewish home in Amsterdam’s de Pijp neighbourhood and is known for her protest songs, has said she never wanted to exclude anyone but rather wanted to make room for people who feel unsafe in a mosh pit.
