When UK-based photographer David Kittos posted a photo of Skittles to Flickr in January 2010, he didn't know it would spark a U.S. presidential campaign controversy six years later.
And as a former refugee, he told the BBC, he's not happy that his photo is being used by Donald Trump's campaign to warn against Syrian war refugees.
"In 1974, when I was six-years old, I was a refugee from the Turkish occupation of Cyprus, so I would never approve the use of this image against refugees,” Kittos said.
The photographer said the picture, which was widely circulated after Donald Trump Jr. posted it on Twitter, was used without his permission.
It’s labeled on his Flickr page as “All rights reserved,” which by definition means the copyright holder has the authority to distribute the work.
"This was six years ago when there were no Syrian refugees at the time and it was never done with the intention of spreading a political message," he said.
Kittos said he doesn’t know if he’ll take legal action.
The makers of Skittles signaled their own distaste for the Trump post.
"Skittles are candy. Refugees are people," a spokeswoman for the candy's parent company, Wrigley, said in a statement. "We don't feel it's an appropriate analogy. We will respectfully refrain from further commentary as anything we say could be misinterpreted as marketing."
For the record, as the Washington Post noted, the Trump post is grossly misleading. The odds of being killed by a refugee in a terrorist attack are about 1 in more than 3.6 billion, according to a recent Cato Institute study.
