British trip-hop group Massive Attack faced a police investigation and entry bans on two of its members last week after they raised a Palestinian flag on stage during a concert in Singapore to chants of “Free Palestine” from the crowd.
In an Instagram post on Sunday, the group said they were “detained by the police, isolated and separately questioned” with some of their members even being “subjected to hotel room searches and temporary passport confiscation”.
The band said their audience had been chanting “Free Palestine” from before they even stepped on stage and continued to do so at the end of the show. They said the fans were “presumably aware but undeterred” by the government’s strict censorship laws.
Massive Attack said they “did not imagine that merely holding up the flag of a sovereign state recognised by 157 countries (Palestine) would violate any law”.
Nonetheless, the group said they were “proud” to have expressed solidarity with Palestine alongside their fans in Singapore “who clearly felt a moral imperative” to do so as Palestinians lived through a “reality of illegal occupation, apartheid and genocide”.
