By a commentator for Tjen Folket Media.
Originally published September 19, 2020.
The rapper Kamelen is to appear in court this week, charged with the obstruction of a police officer and incitement after yelling “fuck the police” during a concert in Kristiansand in 2018. In the city where police in 2017 allowed Nordfront to march openly in the streets and where three known Nazis have recently been cleared of charges for raising a Nazi flag in front of the Gestapo’s former torture basement on April 9, 2018, and where they allowed SIAN to set fire to the Koran last year, t a rapper getting the public to sing along to “fuck the police” was going too far.
Fædrelandsvennen writes that Marcus “Kamelen” Mosele explained to the Kristiansand court on Tuesday that he has included “fuck the police” as a part of the show at his concerts for five years without issue. The police have clearly found it very offending , and claim that he looked directly at police officers when he, according to the charge , “yelled ‘fuck the police’ several times through the microphone. He obstructed them during the carrying out of their service in this manner.” A police officer explained to the court that “the atmosphere became aggressive and threatening for us. People began to surround us and I believed that we needed to do something before we were completely surrounded. I approached him and then he yelled “fuck the police” right in our faces.” According to the police, this started to lead up to fighting among the crowd , guards, and the police. The police stopped the concert and arrested not only the rapper, but also others present.
In the video, Kamelen’s DJ is seen pushed to the ground and put in a chokehold by security guards, and he says that while he did not receive any serious physical injuries, he suffered from a sore throat and was in shock after the incident, and says that when he watches the video, he thinks he could have died that day. He was also arrested and was charged with violence against police officers in the line of duty. But, as the security guards and police had conflicting explanations for what happened, the charge was dropped.
Mosele says that the police used violence and abuse of power when they stopped the concert. There is no reason not to believe this. The police are a violent, racist, and oppressive institution. The fact that Kristiansand police are violent and saturated by racism has been highlighted in several demonstrations against police violence in the past few months. One of these demonstrations was in connection with an incident where Kristiansand police used a chokehold on a suspect during questioning just to force him to reveal his Snapchat password. This report from Kampkomiteen mentions not only some of the many overreaches against groups of people by local police, but also the peoples’ growing resistance towards the police.
The police’s routine protection of fascists and their freedom of speech stands in stark contrast to how little freedom of speech one rapper is afforded. The same goes for the degree of harassment that the police believe that people should accept from fascists in contrast to how extremely little they themselves can tolerate. When SIAN proposes ethnic cleansing and very clearly violates the “racism paragraph” in the law, the police do not intervene, since then it is their duty to protect freedom of speech. But when they themselves feel “obstructed”, they no longer talk about allowing people to express themselves first, then face sentencing later.
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