Sting said this about playing in Tashkent:

I am well aware of the Uzbek president’s appalling reputation in the field of human rights as well as the environment. I made the decision to play there in spite of that have come to believe that cultural boycotts are not only pointless gestures, they are counter-productive.

This stands in stark contrast to Sting’s refusal to cross Kazakhstan’s “virtual picket lines.” Much like the concert in Kazakhstan, which was part of the president’s birthday celebrations, Sting’s appearance in Tashkent was solely for the enjoyment of Uzbekistan’s elite. The cheapest tickets cost $1000. That’s 45 times more than the average Uzbek’s monthly salary. 

Meanwhile, the government of Uzbekistan removes hundreds of thousands of children from schools across the country every harvest season and forces them to pick cotton to enrich the ruling regime. Sound like the kind of folks you want to take money from?

Sting was personally invited by Gulnara Karimova, and the two sat together during the fashion that preceded Sting’s performance. Gulnara Karimova is as complicit in Uzbekistan’s dictatorship as her father is. She was Deputy foreign Minister, head of the Uzbekistan’s mission to the UN in Switzerland, and it is speculated that she could succeed her father as president.  Gulnara has been described as a “robber baron” by US diplomats; she has used her family connections to gain control of Uzbekistan’s mobile phone monopoly and Zeromax, a multi-billion company that controls most of the country’s industry. A dispatch from the US Embassy in Tashkent described her as the “single most hated person in the country.”

Craig Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, put is best when he said: “Sting is a hypocrite.” Don’t let Sting get away with profiting off of brutal dictatorships. Sign this petition here and demand that he donate Gulnara Karimova’s money to human rights defenders in Uzbekistan.