Human rights organization Amnesty International has sent out a public apology to Iggy Pop in light of a recent anti-torture ad campaign that used a picture of the singer's bruised and battered face without his permission.
The ad had been delivered by the Amnesty International Belgium French branch and had featured a beaten-up Pop with the caption "L'avenir du rock'n'roll c'est Justin Bieber," which roughly translates in English to "Justin Bieber is the future of rock'n'roll." The point of the ad was to demonstrate the inefficacy of torture, with a secondary tagline translating to "torture a man and he will tell you anything."
Today (June 24), Pop's official Twitter account weighed in on the ad by tweeting out an apology from Amnesty International, which explained it didn't actually have permission to use Pop's image to prove its point.
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.
The organization added that a similar ad using the image of the Dalai Lama was also made without permission and has since been pulled out of circulation.
The ad had been delivered by the Amnesty International Belgium French branch and had featured a beaten-up Pop with the caption "L'avenir du rock'n'roll c'est Justin Bieber," which roughly translates in English to "Justin Bieber is the future of rock'n'roll." The point of the ad was to demonstrate the inefficacy of torture, with a secondary tagline translating to "torture a man and he will tell you anything."
Today (June 24), Pop's official Twitter account weighed in on the ad by tweeting out an apology from Amnesty International, which explained it didn't actually have permission to use Pop's image to prove its point.
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.
The organization added that a similar ad using the image of the Dalai Lama was also made without permission and has since been pulled out of circulation.
