A number of bands have pulled out from the Victorious music competition simply hours earlier than their scheduled performances, following claims by Irish people group The Mary Wallopers that they had been “cut off” for displaying a Palestinian flag.
The Final Dinner Celebration, Cliffords, and The Tutorial introduced on Saturday that they’d not be performing on the annual music competition in Portsmouth following Friday’s incident.
The organisers, who mentioned the band’s set was minimize brief for utilizing a “discriminatory” chant, have since apologised and promised to make “a substantial donation to humanitarian relief efforts for the Palestinian people”.
Rock band The Final Dinner Celebration mentioned they’re “outraged” by the incident and would boycott the competition.
“We are outraged by the decision made to silence The Mary Wallopers yesterday at Victorious. As a band we cannot cosign political censorship and will therefore be boycotting the festival today,” they mentioned in an announcement shared on their Instagram web page.
“As Gazans are deliberately plunged into catastrophic famine after two years of escalating violence, it is urgent and obvious that artists use their platform to draw attention to the cause.
“To see an try to direct consideration away from the genocide with a view to keep an apolitical picture is immensely disappointing.”
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Abigail Morris, Emily Roberts, Georgia Davies, Lizzie Mayland and Aurora Nishevci of The Final Dinner Celebration. File pic: Reuters
The Final Dinner Celebration mentioned that all through the summer season, they’ve used their performances to encourage their audiences to make donations to a medical charity supporting Palestinians and urged their followers “more than ever to do the same”.
The band mentioned they’re “devastated to be put in this position” and apologised to those that had been hoping to see them carry out.
“Although a flag was displayed on stage contrary to our policy, and this was raised with the artist’s crew, the show was not ended at this point, and it was the artist’s decision to stop the song.”
The Mary Wallopers claimed the competition had launched a “misleading statement to the press claiming they cut our sound because of a discriminatory chant, and not the band’s call to Free Palestine”.
The band mentioned their video “clearly shows a Victorious crew member coming on stage, interfering with our show, removing the flag from the stage and then the sound being cut following a chant of ‘Free Palestine'”.
“The same crew member is later heard in the video saying ‘you aren’t playing until the flag is removed’,” the band added.
Rock band The Tutorial have additionally pulled out of the competition, saying they might not “in good conscience” carry out at “a festival that silences free speech”, whereas Irish band Cliffords mentioned they “refuse to play if we are to be censored for showing our support to the people of Palestine”.
After the bands’ bulletins that they had been pulling out of the competition, the organisers launched one other assertion, saying that they didn’t deal with “the explanation of our policies sensitively or far enough in advance to allow a sensible conclusion to be reached”, and issued an apology.
