Luaty Beirão is a Luso-Angolan rapper and activist who was part of the Angola 15, a group of fifteen young Angolan activists who were arrested in June 2015 for holding a meeting to read a book on nonviolent resistance. Beirão has frequently used his music and rap identities, Brigadeiro Mata Frakuzx and Ikonoklasta, to discuss life under the Angolan dictatorship. While in prison, Beirão began a hunger strike with several other political prisoners to protest their arrest. He continued his strike for 36 days and reached critical condition until the dos Santos regime, after international pressure, reduced the prisoners’ sentences and placed them under house arrest.
