Banksy defends Glastonbury migrant boat stunt
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Banksy posted on Instagram on July 1 a video of an inflatable boat with dummy migrants over a crowd at Glastonbury Festival.
PHOTO: BANKSY/INSTAGRAM
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LONDON – Banksy has on July 3 defended launching an inflatable migrant boat over a crowd at the Glastonbury Festival on June 28 after Britain’s interior minister said it was vile and unacceptable.
The elusive England-based street artist wrote on Instagram that Home Secretary James Cleverly’s comments were a “bit over the top”.
Banksy also wrote that he funded a boat which rescued 17 unaccompanied children from the central Mediterranean Sea on July 1.
“As punishment, the Italian authorities have detained” the boat named MV Louise Michel, he added, “which seems vile and unacceptable to me”.
Banksy launched the pink-painted Louise Michel ship, named after a French feminist anarchist, in 2020 with the aim of rescuing migrants attempting to reach Europe by sea from North Africa.
In summer 2023, it provided “life-saving support to more than 700 people in distress” in the Mediterranean, according to the ship’s website.
An inflatable boat with dummy migrants wearing life vests was made to crowd surf during a performance by British punk band Idles at Glastonbury, during a song which criticises hateful rhetoric around immigration.
Initially believed to be part of the band’s performance, it was later revealed that the artwork was made by Banksy without Idles’ knowledge.
The Glastonbury music festival in 2024 highlighted themes surrounding immigration, with a Terminal 1 exhibition to raise awareness of the immigrant experience, recreating a British border and making entrants answer a British citizenship test question.
Mr Cleverly had criticised Banksy’s migrant boat stunt as celebrating “loss of life in the Channel”.
The Conservative government under outgoing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has made stopping “small boats” crossings a priority and promised to cut immigration if it was re-elected on July 4.
But its flagship policy to send asylum seekers to Rwanda is controversial, and is tied up by court challenges.
The Tories warned that the Labour Party, which swept to a landslide general election victory,
One campaign video in June showed people rolling out a red carpet on a beach, ending with the line “Labour’s approach to illegal immigration”, prompting a backlash from some on social media. AFP
