K’naan seeks support against arms trade

K’naan, whose real name is Keinan Abdi Warsame, who had since directed a short video on the new crusade, asked the people to add their names to the Control Arms petition (@visit: www.controlarms.org) calling on governments to sign up to a strong Arms Trade Treaty. K’naan, who achieved world-wide fame a couple years back with […]

K’naan, whose real name is Keinan Abdi Warsame, who had since directed a short video on the new crusade, asked the people to add their names to the Control Arms petition (@visit: www.controlarms.org) calling on governments to sign up to a strong Arms Trade Treaty.

K’naan, who achieved world-wide fame a couple years back with his World Cup anthem “Waving Flag,” was in the news big-time recently when he politely asked Republican contender Mitt Romney to stop using that very song during his campaign stumps.

“Look I know you think I’m so righteous/ but I’m also into rifles . . . I don’t discriminate/I got friends who are snipers,” the rapper said in his new release called ‘More Beautiful Than Silence’.

The inspiration for the campaign videos comes from the estimate that around 12bn bullets are produced globally each year “enough to kill nearly every man, woman and child on the planet” twice.

The video features five-year-old twin girls Anais and Mirabelle Lee, from the United States. In the video, the care-free girls are playing with ammunition,  an image designed to shock.

The video, released Thursday during the first week of the Arms Trade Treaty talks, is now taking place at the United Nations, in New York. The negotiations are due to run until July 27.

The petition would be handed at the United Nations later this month before the treaty is agreed on July 27.