Music

Amnesty International apologizes for using Iggy Pop's image in an anti-torture ad

by Tyler Munro

The irony of Amnesty International using unauthorized means to get their point across is too obvious to dwell on, but when they released an advertisement last week that featured a bruised and battered Iggy Pop calling Justin Bieber the future of rock ‘n’ roll, we had but one thought: Shitty move, dudes.

The concept was clever as the execution was shameless. Worse, it turns out it was entirely unauthorized.

“Torture a man and he will tell you anything,” read the ad’s French copy. “In addition to being inhumane, torture is ineffective. Let’s stop it,” it continued.

The lesson? Justin Bieber sucks, but even Iggy Pop would admit otherwise with the right amount of squeeze. The problem? Iggy Pop didn’t sign off on it, meaning they used his likeness to effectively slander Justin Bieber without actually asking permission first. The chances that Iggy likes Bieber are slim to none—much like the chances he’d have allowed something like this to have his face on it.

He’s stayed mum on the ad for the most part, only linking to Amnesty International’s apology on his corporate run Twitter account. Read it in full below to find out how he human rights organization and not the punk rock legend came out like Stooges in the end.

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 image has been removed.