Amnesty International Apologise To Iggy Pop

For using his image without permission...

A few days ago, an image from Amnesty International’s Belgian branch went viral online.

Featuring a battered and bruised Iggy Pop, the anti-torture campaign was flagged with the message: Justin Bieber is the future of rock ‘n’ roll. The inference being, of course, that Iggy would never say this, and that torture is both inhumane and, ultimately, ineffective.

Now Iggy Pop has linked via Twitter to an apology from Amnesty on their site, with the organisation seemingly using his image without permission. The apology reads:

To generate awareness about our campaign against torture, Amnesty International Belgium French speaking section used an image of Iggy Pop without his authorization.

Even though we acted in good faith, we would like to apologise to Iggy Pop for having done so.

The overall goal of this campaign is to try to influence people’s ideas on the use of torture. According to surveys, a shocking number of people believe that “torture may sometimes be useful” ; more than 36% of people even think that torture is justified in some cases. This is unacceptable, and we illustrate this reality with the message that a man who is tortured will say anything in order to escape this awfulness, using provocative images and statements to attract public attention. We would therefore also like to make it clear that the statement attributed to Iggy Pop that he believes Justin Bieber is the future of rock and roll does not represent Iggy Pop’s personal opinion but was part of the creative process for this campaign and was intended to be ironic.

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Want to find out more about the work of Amnesty International? Click HERE.

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