An online video of an Irish actor confronting a man removing posters, erected by campaigners for a “Yes” vote in the abortion referendum, from telephone poles in Limerick has been viewed thousands of times.
Kevin Kiely jnr, who appeared in The Dark Knight Rises and World War Z, recorded a man taking down the posters and posted the footage on his Facebook account.
The posters carry the emblem of the socialist feminist movement Rosa, and bear the slogan “Stop Shaming Women!”. When Kiely asks the man why he is removing the posters, he is heard replying: “None of your business”.
The man does not reply when Kiely asks him: “Do you disagree about stopping shaming women, in 2018, that you have to tear the posters down off the wall?”
Kiely then says: “C’mon, I’ll put you on the internet and you can tell the internet why you tore them down . . . You’ll go on Facebook tonight.”
The man is filmed apparently trying to prevent Kiely from recording him. He asks Kiely to “stop filming” him. Kiely replies: “No I won’t. You’re in a public place. You just did something that is destruction of somebody’s else’s property in a public place, and I filmed you.”
The man then removes two more posters from a pole and walks off. Asked why he confronted the man and filmed him, Kiely said he believed removing the posters was an act of “censorship”, and added, “I can’t condone that.”
“There are ‘No’ posters and ‘Yes’ posters all the up along the street and people can vote for whoever they want. That’s why we live in a democracy,” he said.
Kiely (32) from Ballysimon Road, Limerick, said he would be “voting Yes to repeal the eighth amendment”.