A/HRC/23/34 not criminally punishable but may justify a civil suit or administrative sanctions; and (c) expression that does not give rise to criminal, civil or administrative sanctions but still raises a concern in terms of tolerance, civility and respect for the rights of others.12 In other words, what may be morally objectionable (from one point of view) may not necessarily be legally inadmissible or condemnable. Criminal sanctions should be the very last resort measures only, to be applied in strictly justifiable situations. In this regard, the Special Rapporteur is concerned that many artists have been disproportionately sentenced under the criminal code, including under charges of offences such as “extremism”, “terrorism” or “hooliganism”. A particularly useful suggestion in the Rabat Plan is to use a six-part threshold test for those expressions that are criminally prohibited, implying an analysis of the context, speaker, content or form (which implicitly also refers to “the form of art”), extent of the speech, and likelihood, including imminence. 32. The Special Rapporteur considers that States have the challenge of ensuring the full implementation of artistic freedoms and resort to limitations only when absolutely necessary. States shall bear in mind that they shall not single out some individual conceptions of the beautiful or sacred for official protection, as all persons are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to the equal protection of the law (article 26 of ICCPR). Moreover, “it is not compatible with the [ICCPR] for a restriction to be enshrined in traditional, religious and other such customary law”.13 2. Application to artistic freedoms: specific challenges 33. States and other stakeholders often refer to the necessity of regulating the dissemination of artistic expressions deemed to, for example, call for discrimination, hatred and violence against specific groups or persons, amount to drug propaganda, or contain pornographic content. The necessity to protect children and adolescents against specific contents, such as extreme violence or pornography, the right to privacy and the moral and material rights of authors, and the rights of indigenous peoples, has also been mentioned in responses to the questionnaire. The attention of the Special Rapporteur was also drawn to examples of songs having encouraged ethnic hatred and the broadcasts of these songs having had an amplifying effect on genocide. 14 34. These concerns need to be addressed in compliance with international standards regarding possible limitations as described above. The Special Rapporteur encourages States, when applying these standards, to take into consideration the specific nature of artistic expressions and creations. 35. Artists, like journalists and human rights defenders, are at particular risk as their work depends on visibly engaging people in the public domain. Through their expressions and creations, artists often question our lives, perceptions of ourselves and others, world visions, power relations, human nature and taboos, eliciting emotional as well as intellectual responses. 36. Artistic expression and creativity may entail the re-appropriation of symbols, whether national (flags, national anthems), religious (figures, symbols, venues) or social/economical (a certain brand for example), as part of a response to the narratives promoted by States, religious institutions or economic powers. 15 States, religions, corporate 12 13 14 15 8 A/66/290, para 18. CCPR/C/GC/34, paras. 24 and 32. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, Case No. ICTR-01-72-T, Simon Bikindi, 2008, in particular paras. 254-255, and 264. Svetlana Mincheva, “Symbols into soldiers: Art, censorship and religion”, Background article for the Oslo Conference, p. 2.