The co-founder of rock band Pink Floyd is demanding that the city of Munich remove a statement from its website referring to him as an anti-Semite.
Augsburg, Germany – Roger Waters, co-founder of rock band Pink Floyd, has sent a letter through his lawyer demanding that the city of Munich remove a press release from its website referring to him as an anti-Semite.
Waters’ lawyer, Christian Schertz, sent a letter to city officials demanding the removal of the press release, which was issued by its mayor, Dieter Reiter, ahead of an Olympiahalle concert Waters performed on Wednesday.
Reiter stated that the venue would not be rented out to Waters in the future due to his views.
In the statement, Reiter says that Waters has made “increasingly unacceptable anti-Semitic comments,” adding that he wants to “make it “unequivocally clear that Waters’ anti-Semitic rabble-rousing is not welcome in Munich and will not go unchallenged.”
Waters, who performed with the band between 1965 and 1985 and was instrumental to “The Wall,” “The Dark Side of the Moon” and other albums, routinely calls for a boycott of Israel during his performances and sometimes includes balloons shaped like pigs and emblazoned with the Star of David.
His support for a boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel seeks to force the country to change its policies toward the Palestinian population.
Alongside his Pink Floyd fame, Waters drew international attention in 1989 when he performed songs from “The Wall” in Berlin in 1990 along a strip of land where the Berlin Wall had until recently stood. The show was viewed widely at the time and became a best-selling live album.
dpa
