Macklemore cancels Dubai show to protest UAE role in Sudan civil war

Macklemore has cancelled an upcoming October concert in Dubai over the United Arab Emirates’ role “in the ongoing genocide and humanitarian crisis” in Sudan through its reported support of the paramilitary force that has been fighting government troops there.
The announcement by the US rapper reignited attention to the UAE’s role in the war gripping the African nation. While the UAE repeatedly has denied arming the Rapid Support Forces and supporting its leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, UN experts reported “credible” evidence in January that the Emirates sent weapons to the RSF several times a week from northern Chad.
Sudan plunged into chaos in mid-April 2023, when long-simmering tensions between its military and paramilitary leaders broke out in the capital, Khartoum, and spread to other regions including Darfur. Estimates suggest more than 18,800 people 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 an Emirati diplomat angrily told his counterpart to stop “grandstanding”. The UAE has been a part of ongoing peace talks to end the fighting.
The Emirati foreign ministry offered no immediate comment on Macklemore’s public statement on Sunday, nor did the city-state’s Dubai Media Office. Organisers last week announced the show had been cancelled and refunds would be issued, without offering an explanation for the cancellation.
In a post on Saturday on Instagram, Grammy-winner Macklemore said he had a series of people “asking me to cancel the show in solidarity with the people of Sudan and to boycott doing business in the UAE for the role they are playing in the ongoing genocide and humanitarian crisis”.
Macklemore said he reconsidered the show in part over his recent, public support of Palestinians amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war raging in the Gaza Strip. He recently has begun performing a song called Hind’s Hall, in honour of a young girl named Hind Rajab, who was killed in Gaza by Israeli forces, along with her four cousins, her aunt and uncle and two paramedics. All streaming proceeds generated from Hind’s Hall go to UN relief agency Unrwa.
“I know that this will probably jeopardise my future shows in the area, and I truly hate letting any of my fans down,” he wrote. “I was really excited too. But until the UAE stops arming and funding the RSF I will not perform there.”
He added: “I have no judgment against other artists performing in the UAE. But I do ask the question to my peers scheduled to play in Dubai: If we used our platforms to mobilize collective liberation, what could we accomplish?”
The RSF formed out of the Janjaweed fighters under the then Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, who ruled the country for three decades before being overthrown during a popular uprising in 2019. He is wanted by the international criminal court on charges of genocide and other crimes during the conflict in Darfur in the 2000s.
Dubai has tried to draw A-list performers in the city-state at a brand-new arena and other venues. However, performers in the past have acknowledged the difficulties in performing in the UAE, a hereditarily ruled federation of seven sheikhdoms in which speech is tightly controlled.
That includes the US comedian Dave Chappelle, who drew attention in May in Abu Dhabi when he referred to the Israel-Hamas war as a “genocide” and joked about the UAE’s vast surveillance apparatus.