Jewish center urges boycott of Pink Floyd's Roger Waters concert in Mexico

A US-based Jewish advocacy group has launched a campaign to prevent Pink Floyd founder member Roger Waters from performing on tour in Mexico.

Waters, 76, is due on stage in Mexico City on October 7 as part of his "This Is Not A Drill" North American tour that begins in Pittsburgh in July.

But the Latin American branch of the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC), which supports Holocaust survivors and confronts anti-Semitism, has written to businesses sponsoring and promoting Waters's concert in Mexico, urging them to pull out.

"Your company's prestige should not be stained by those that use music to camouflage discrimination and the diffusion of a violent and racist message," said the letter, signed by SWC international relations directors Shimon Samuels and Ariel Gelblung.

Waters is a well-known pro-Palestinian activist who supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement that promotes a boycott of Israel in various forms.

He has urged fellow artists not to perform concerts in the Middle Eastern nation.

Israel sees BDS as a strategic threat and accuses the movement of anti-Semitism -- a claim activists including Waters firmly deny, calling it an attempt to discredit them.

The SWC however has accused Waters of anti-Semitism over his use of an inflatable pig bearing the Star of David during previous concerts.

The consumption of pork is banned in Judaism while the Star of David is synonymous with the religion.

"These images refer to medieval German anti-Semitic iconography," said the center, which launched a "Resist the Racist" campaign the last time Waters performed in Mexico in 2018.

SWC was named after Simon Wiesenthal, an Austrian Holocaust survivor and well-known Nazi hunter.

The center, founded in 1977, promotes the prosecution of Nazi war criminals, fights anti-Semitism and teaches about the Holocaust.

© 2020 AFP