Macklemore has canceled a planned October concert in Dubai due to the UAE’s role “in the ongoing genocide and humanitarian crisis” in Sudan, through its alleged support for the paramilitary force fighting government troops in that country.
The American rapper’s announcement has renewed attention on the UAE’s role in the war in the African country. While the Emirates has repeatedly denied arming the Rapid Support Forces and supporting its leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, UN experts reported in January “credible” evidence that the Emirates was sending weapons to the RSF several times a week from northern Chad.
Sudan plunged into chaos in mid-April 2023, when long-running tensions between its military and paramilitary leaders erupted in the capital, Khartoum, and spread to other regions, including Darfur. More than 18,800 people are estimated to have been killed in the fighting, while more than 10 million have fled their homes. Hundreds of thousands are on the brink of famine.
At a contentious UN Security Council meeting in June, Sudan’s embattled government directly accused the UAE of arming the RSF, and one Emirati diplomat angrily demanded his counterpart stop “making a spectacle of himself.” The UAE is involved in ongoing peace talks to end the fighting.
Neither the UAE Foreign Ministry nor the Dubai Media Office have commented on Macklemore’s public statement Sunday. Organizers announced last week that the show had been canceled and that refunds would be issued, without providing an explanation for the cancellation.
In an Instagram post Saturday, Grammy winner Macklemore said a series of people had “asked him to cancel the show in solidarity with the people of Sudan and to boycott doing business in the UAE due to its role in the ongoing genocide and humanitarian crisis.”
Macklemore said he reconsidered the show in part because of his recent public support for Palestinians amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. He recently began performing a song called “Hind’s Hall,” in tribute to a young girl named Hind Rajab, who was killed in Gaza by Israeli forces, along with her four cousins, her aunt, her uncle and two paramedics. All proceeds from the streaming of “Hind’s Hall” will benefit the U.N. relief agency UNRWA.
“I know this will probably jeopardize my future shows in the region, and I really hate to disappoint my fans,” he wrote. “I was really excited too. But until the UAE stops arming and funding the RSF, I will not play there.”
He added: “I have no judgment against other artists performing in the UAE. But I ask my peers who are scheduled to perform in Dubai: If we used our platforms to mobilize collective liberation, what could we accomplish?”
The RSF emerged from the Janjaweed fighters of then-Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who ruled the country for three decades before being overthrown in a popular uprising in 2019. He is wanted by the International Criminal Court for genocide and other crimes committed during the Darfur conflict in the 2000s.
Dubai has tried to lure top artists to the city-state, to a brand new arena and other venues. But artists have already acknowledged the difficulties they face performing in the United Arab Emirates, a federation of seven emirates governed by hereditary rule and where freedom of expression is tightly controlled.
Among them is American comedian Dave Chappelle, who attracted attention in Abu Dhabi in May when he called the war between Israel and Hamas a “genocide” and joked about the UAE’s vast surveillance apparatus.
