Pink Floyd's Roger Waters Not To Be Censored in Chile

On Thursday, the Santiago Court of Appeals rejected the protective recourse filed by the Representative Committee of Jewish Entities in Chile (CJCH) against Roger Waters.

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Through this legal action, the CJCH sought to prevent the leader of Pink Floyd from performing two concerts scheduled for this weekend in the Chilean capital.

"The presentation made in these proceedings has not mentioned facts that could constitute a violation of the guarantees indicated in Article 20 of the Constitution," the Court said.

The Jewish community attempted to accuse Waters of a "incitement to hatred" offense for his public comments against the offensive that the Israeli occupying army is carrying out in Gaza.

The text reads, "Roger Waters, the star of the British band Pink Floyd, went on stage in Uruguay with a keffiyeh around his neck and chanted: 'Stop the genocide in Palestine.' As a reminder, Roger Waters had accused the 'Israeli lobby' of having banned him from their hotels in South America. After local Jewish community leaders asked them to avoid him, hotels have refused to accept reservations for the former Pink Floyd singer, whom the United States accuses of antisemitism."

In response to the Jewish community's request, over 60 Chilean artists asked the Court of Appeals not to admit a recourse whose consequences would revive the dark times of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1989).

"The mentioned action, beyond its rhetorical foundation, seeks to censor in advance the criticism of the killing of children, bombings of refugee camps, hospitals, the killing of United Nations officials, among other crimes committed by the government led by the far-right Benjamin Netanyahu," said the Chilean artists in a letter.

"This performance has received criticism from a multitude of governments, various international and impartial organizations, artists, politicians, and intellectuals worldwide, both for its indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force and for the costs it is incurring on innocent civilian populations," they added.

"Therefore, it is an action aimed at silencing well-founded criticisms protected by International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, with objectives that are not for protection but for manipulation, intimidation, and propaganda," the Chilean artist stressed 

"That is why we strongly and unequivocally condemn this attempt to impose censorship in Chile. Even more so when it uses resources created for the protection of individuals, precisely to safeguard the respect for rights whose violation is being denounced by the persecuted artists today," they concluded.

Currently, Chile hosts the largest community of voluntarily emigrated and forcibly expelled Palestinians outside the Arab states.