Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters Rips Richard Branson’s Venezuela Benefit Concert: ‘Don’t Politicize Aid’
The Red Cross and the UN, unequivocally agree, don’t politicize aid. Leave the Venezuelan people alone to exercise their legal right to self determination. pic.twitter.com/I0yS3u75b6
— Roger Waters (@rogerwaters) February 18, 2019
Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters ripped Virgin Group CEO Richard Branson’s Venezuela ‘Aid Live’ show, as he accused the benefit concert of politicizing humanitarian aid and demanded the country be allowed “self-determination.”
“[The concert] it has nothing to do with the needs of the Venezuelan people, it has nothing to do with Democracy, it has nothing to do with freedom, and it has nothing to do aid,” Waters said in a video shared on social media. “It has to do with Richard Branson — and I’m not surprised by this — having bought the U.S. saying, ‘We have decided to take over Venezuela, for whatever our reasons may be.’”
“Do we really want Venezuela to turn in to another Iraq or Syria or Libya?” He added. “I don’t and neither do the Venezuelan people.”
Waters also noted on Twitter that “the Red Cross and the UN, unequivocally agree, don’t politicize aid. Leave the Venezuelan people alone to exercise their legal right to self determination.”
Branson’s Venezuelan charity event is based on the Ethiopia ‘Live Aid’ telethons widely popular in the 1980s, but has faced criticism from those who believe it is being used to boost America’s claim that Juan Guaidó is the rightful president, not Nicolás Maduro who has led the country since 2013.
The concert will be thrown in a Columbian town right by the Venezuelan border and features a number of popular Latin artists — though, the act that might be most recognizable to American audiences is the Swedish disc jockey Alesso.
Branson’s team released the following statement denying Waters’s characterization of the show: “Richard is helping them to raise awareness of the crisis in Venezuela and raise much needed funds through this event. This is not a political statement and the U.S. is not involved in any aspect of this.”
Watch the clip above, via Twitter.
[featured image via screengrab]
