U2 bags human rights award

The Irish rock band bagged Amnesty International's annual Ambassadors of Conscience award in Chile.

Irish rock band U2 received Amnesty International's annual Ambassadors of Conscience award on Sunday in Chile's national stadium. The stadium was once a notorious detention centre for political prisoners.

HT Image

Chilean President-elect Michelle Bachelet, a political prisoner in the 1970s, presented the award to U2 at a backstage ceremony prior to the band playing a concert.

Amnesty said it has reband members Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen, as well as their manager, Paul McGuinness, for using their music and celebrity to champion human rights causes for more than two decades.

"There are still people in this country who are silent and they are sick with their secrets. And I would just stay to them, this is the moment, the beginning of the new Chile to set yourself free from those secrets and come forward," Bono said.

Bono earlier in the day met with outgoing President Ricardo Lagos at the national palace and received the Pablo Neruda artistic and cultural merit medal. U2 is on the South American leg of a world tour.