Cape Verdean culture minister pledges full support to artist beaten in Las Palmas

Cape Verdean Minister of Culture and Creative Industries Abraao Vicente said this Friday he was “shocked” by the beating of artist Juran Enrique in Las Palmas, promising support and asking him to calm down before talking about racism.

In a telephone conversation with the Lusa agency from Switzerland, where he is participating in the 64th series of meetings of the Assembly of Member States of the World Intellectual Property Organization, Abraan Vicente said he was “shocked” by the brutality of the aggression.

Cape Verdean artist Juran Enrique has been hospitalized after being beaten on Saturday night in Las Palmas by a “brutal aggression” that Spanish police are investigating, according to the Efe agency.

Abraao Vicente revealed that the artist’s health insurance has already been activated and that he is being treated well at a local hospital.

The minister asked people to calm down before looking into the reasons and the context of the aggression and concluding that it was a racist or xenophobic attack.

“We can’t rush into classifying, subjectifying, or adjectives to what’s happening without listening to Juran’s version and listening to the context of what happened,” Vicente said, ensuring that the artist “will not miss anything,” but also referred to the insurance doctors. .

“With health insurance covering all these costs, these costs and these costs, it makes no sense for the state of Cape Verde to bear costs that, so to speak, are not its own,” he explained to Luza, guaranteeing “all subsequent costs.” up” things. .

The minister asked Cape Verdean artists to take this case as an example, and whenever they are invited to an international event, they have access to an official invitation as well as international insurance, both medical and life.

“Because this is a case that rarely happens, but it can happen,” Abraao Vicente warned, saying that the most important thing now is to “take care” of the artist.

Juran Enrique was due to open the exhibition on Wednesday at Casa África in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, a Spanish diplomatic institution that, according to its official website, seeks to strengthen relations with African countries through economic, social, cultural or political activities.

Sources at Casa África told Efe that due to the circumstances in which the Cape Verdean artist finds himself, the opening of the Lalonji (far from here) exhibition has been suspended.

While the details of the aggression, the victim of which the artist became, are unknown.

Juran Enrique was born in 1993 in the city of Mindelo in Sao Vicente. He is considered an expressionist artist who publishes illustrations in the newspaper Expresso das Ilhas in Cape Verde.

In 2018, he already exhibited at the Centro Atlântico de Arte Moderna in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and at the Centro Cultural de Cabo Verde in Lisbon.