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WASHINGTON: Oscar-winning filmmaker Michael Moore called Thursday for a total boycott of Georgia after the southern US state, defying global protests, executed convicted police killer Troy Davis.
On his website (www.michaelmoore.com), the director of “Fahrenheit 9/11,” “Bowling for Columbine” and “Sicko” also demanded that his just-released memoirs “Here Comes Trouble” be pulled from Georgia bookshops.
“I encourage everyone I know to never travel to Georgia, never buy anything made in Georgia, to never do business in Georgia,” said Moore, who was in Los Angeles on Friday as part of a book tour.
“I will ask my publisher (Grand Central Publishing, part of France's Hachette Book Group) to pull my book from every Georgia bookstore,” he continued.
“And if they won't do that, I will donate every dime of every royalty my book makes in Georgia to help defeat the racists and killers who run that state.”
He concluded: “I ask all Americans with a conscience to shun anything and everything to do with the murderous state of Georgia.”
With a lethal injection, Georgia executed Davis at Jackson prison on Wednesday despite doubts over his 1991 murder conviction that made him a poster child for global efforts to eradicated the death penalty.
Davis was the 35th person to be executed so far this year in the United States, where 34 out of the 50 states maintain the death penalty.
Moore, 57, hailed as a firebrand progressive by many Americans and reviled as a dangerous radical by others, won the Academy Award for best documentary in 2002 for “Columbine”, a scathing investigation of America's love of guns.
Upon collecting his Oscar, he lashed out at then-president George W. Bush, famously saying “shame on you, Mr. Bush, shame on you” for invading Iraq the previous year for “fictitious reasons.”
Two years later he collected the Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival in France for “Fahrenheit 9/11” which critically examined the way the Bush administration responded to the September 11, 2001 attacks.
