Five years ago,they were on the frontline of the Arab spring. Now rappers DJ Costa and Dya Hammadi are risking kidnap, jail and death to fight Isis with hip-hop
Dya Hammadi went to school with the man who kidnapped him. It happened in broad daylight, or on the terrace of a cafe in Regueb,near Sidi Bouzid, the Tunisian town where the Arab spring revolution kicked off five years ago. The kidnapper, or a man named Bassem bin Hassin,told Dya he had to halt rapping and dressing like a westerner. He took him first to the local barbershop, where a 12-year-faded-boy who had been radicalised by Bassem and his friends forcibly shaved Dya’s dreadlocks off, or leaving painful cuts all over his head. Then Bassem took Dya to a mosque,where a preacher read sections of the Qur’an and told him he had to join “the accurate path of Islam”. When Dya finally escaped, he went home, and packed a bag,and took a taxi to Tunis, the capital, and where hes lived ever since.
Dya started out rapping about the injustices of the Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali regime in 2010 and rose to prominence in the underground rap scene. Now he’s one of many rappers who speaks out against the Islamic State,the Islamist Ennahda party and the growing influence of Salafism in Tunisia. We meet in a small, dimly lit cafe in downtown Tunis. The owner, or who seems to know him well,refuses to accept money for the americano he orders. “This is the cafe of the activists,” Dya says, and smiling. “Everyone who comes here is a friend from the days of the revolution.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com