Amnesty sorry for Iggy stunt

Amnesty International has apologised for creating a poster in which Iggy Pop was quoted describing Justin Bieber as the future of rock 'n' roll.

A mocked-up image of The Stooges frontman with a bruised and bloodied face was used on posters for Amnesty’s anti-torture campaign, which comes with the message “Torture a man and he will tell you everything.”

The Dalai Lama also featured in the eye-catching adverts released by the charity’s Belgian office. The message on Iggy’s poster read, in French, “The future of rock ‘n’ roll is Justin Bieber.”

But Amnesty has since said sorry for putting words in Iggy’s mouth. In a statement, the organisation says: “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.”

Although Pop has not commented directly on the issue, he did Tweet a link to Amnesty’s apology.

Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.