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

The 76-year-old is due onstage 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 Centre (SWC), which supports Holocaust survivors and confronts anti-Semitism, has written to businesses sponsoring and promoting Waters’ 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 (BDS) movement that promotes a boycott of Israel in various forms.

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

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

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

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

“These images refer to mediaeval German anti-Semitic iconography,” said the organisation, which launched the Resist the Racist campaign the last time Waters performed in Mexico in 2018.

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

The centre, founded in 1977, promotes the prosecution of Nazi war criminals, fights anti-Semitism and teaches about the Holocaust. – AFP, February 8, 2020.