AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL have apologised to musician Iggy Pop after using his image without permission – and stating that he believed Justin Bieber was the future of rock and roll.
This Belgian ad featuring a bloodied and bruised Iggy Pop started doing the rounds online last week.
Using images of battered celebrities, the ads were supposed to imply that tortured people will say anything to make the pain stop.
The ad featuring Iggy Pop bore the confession “The future of rock and roll is Justin Bieber” – implying, of course, that Mr Pop had been tortured into admitting this.
But MTV reports that the ad had been created without the musician’s permission, and he wasn’t happy.
Yesterday Iggy shared this apology from Amnesty International with his Twitter followers:
To generate awareness about our campaign against torture, Amnesty International Belgium French speaking section used an image of Iggy Pop without his authorisation. Even though we acted in good faith, we would like to apologise to Iggy Pop for having done so.
They also added that in no way did Iggy Pop actually say that Justin Bieber was the future of rock and roll:
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… [it] was intended to be ironic.
Amnesty International previously had to apologise for using an unauthorised photo of the Dalai Lama with the caption “A man who doesn’t have a Rolex by age 50 has wasted his life”.
