Indonesian protesters on Saturday demonstrated against a concert by the famed Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli due to his support for Israel.
The move came after Indonesia’s top Islamic council urged the government last month to cancel two planned concerts by the Italian tenor in the Southeast Asian country as part of a world tour.
The event at the UNESCO-listed Borobudur Temple in Indonesia’s Central Java’s Magelang city went ahead as scheduled. A second concert is scheduled for Tuesday in Jakarta.
Public sympathy for Palestinians is widespread in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, which does not have formal diplomatic relations with Israel.
Last month, anti-Israel groups in Jordan also called for a boycott of Bocelli’s November 27 concert in the ancient Jordanian city of Petra.
Bocelli, 68, who has a long history of support for Israel, performed at a concert in Tel Aviv in 2022 and sang at a 2010 fundraiser in Los Angeles for Friends of the IDF, an organization supporting the Israeli military.
