Photo: Detail from Hukos album cover
“This is not a form of censorship,” claimed Professor Jerzy Przyborowski, Deputy Rector of the University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, northern Poland, as cited by the Polish Press Agency (PAP).
“We decided that the university cannot be an arena for the propagation of practices that offend anyone, even if by music,” he said.
Rapper Bartek Huk (aka Hukos or Hujek) released a tune in 2007 in which he appeared to threaten the then president of Poland Lech Kaczynski, the late leader of the conservative Law and Justice party (Kaczynski died in the 2010 Smolensk air disaster).
“Hey, Mr President, one day I'll kill him,” the chorus begins.
“Because Mr President, everything is wrong in this country. He's the head of state, so he's responsible for everything. So watch your back Mr President.”
The university was tipped off about Hukos's controversial rap by Ryszard Nowak, chairman of the privately run Nationwide Defence Committee against Sects.
Nowak had previously sought to have a case brought against the rapper, but prosecutors in Opole, southern Poland, rejected the lawsuit in October 2011, claiming that Hukos had made “a critical assessment of the socio-economic conditions in Poland at the time.”
Meanwhile, organiser of the gig Igor Kruk has insisted that the rapper “had no intention of playing that song from five years ago,” and that Hukos was due to perform material from his new album.
Ryszard Nowak has been involved in several cases involving Polish pop stars and rock singers, including a long-running case against Adam Darski, lead singer of death metal group Behemoth, for “offending religious sensibilities.”
Darski tore up a copy of the bible at a 2007 concert in Gdynia, northern Poland, and the singer is currently awaiting a retrial after the country's Supreme Court concluded in October last year that a person may be found guilty of offending religious sensibilities even if the defendant had not “directly” intended to do so. (nh)