Sting accepted more than £1m to play for the Uzbek dictator's daughter, reports Marina Hyde
Sting with Gulnara Karimova at a fashion show in Uzbekistan. Photograph: Getty
From the Lost in showbiz blog of the Guardian.
Once again we must ponder the question "how much money is enough?", inspired by reports that Sting accepted between £1m and £2m to perform for the glory of the brutal despotic regime in Uzbekistan.
The services of Sting - whose personal fortune is estimated well north of £150m - were engaged by Gulnara Karimova, the daughter and anointed heir of dictator Islam Karimov. To explore Islam Karimov's human rights record in full would take too long: suffice to say he is condemned approximately every 10 minutes by organisations from the UN to Amnesty, accused of such delights as boiling his enemies, slaughtering his poverty-stricken people when they protest, and conscripting armies of children for slave labour. Oh, and the Aral Sea on which his country sits - once the world's fourth biggest lake - has lost 80% of its volume, partly as a result of Karimov siphoning it off to intensively irrigate his remote desert cotton fields.
Whether he is a perfect fit for self-styled eco-warrior and humanitarian Sting is a matter for you to decide: what is beyond dispute is that in October, the former Police frontman agreed to travel to Tashkent and effectively headline Gulnara Karimova's alleged arts festival.
Unfortunately, people have now found out about the jaunt, and so many of them have misunderstood the reasoning behind it as financially motivated that Sting has been forced to issue a statement.
"I played in Uzbekistan a few months ago," he begins. "The concert was organized by the president's daughter and I believe sponsored by Unicef."
You can believe it all you like, Sting, but it's absolute cobblers - Lost in Showbiz has checked it out with Unicef, who tactfully describe themselves as "quite surprised" by your claim.
"I supported wholeheartedly the cultural boycott of South Africa under the apartheid regime," Sting continues, in response to those who wonder why he did not refuse the invitation, "because it was a special case and specifically targeted the younger demographic of the ruling white middle class."
Chop-logic, sir! But go on.
"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. I have come to believe that cultural boycotts are not only pointless gestures, they are counter-productive, where proscribed states are further robbed of the open commerce of ideas and art and as a result become even more closed, paranoid and insular."
Mm. Even if you accept Sting's live performances as "ideas and art", you can't really help but question this notion of "open commerce", considering the tickets for his concert cost more than 45 times the average monthly salary in Uzbekistan. 45 times! As for his distaste for the regime, the picture above shows Sting being repulsed by it all at a fashion show during the "cultural" week, which also seems to have served as a vehicle for promoting Gulnara Karimova's jewellery range for stratospherically expensive Swiss firm Chopard. She's the one sitting right next to him.
"I seriously doubt whether the President of Uzbekistan cares in the slightest whether artists like myself come to play in his country," concludes Sting. "He is hermetically sealed in his own medieval, tyrannical mindset."
You will note that Sting conspicuously declines to deflect the heat by stating that he donated all or indeed any of his monstrous fee to charity. And I could go on - but at this point it feels right to hand over to former British ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray.
"This really is transparent bollocks," observes Murray on his blog. "He did not take a guitar and jam around the parks of Tashkent. He got paid over a million pounds to play an event specifically designed to glorify a barbarous regime. Is the man completely mad?
"Why does he think it was worth over a million quid to the regime to hear him warble a few notes?
"I agree with him that cultural isolation does not help. I am often asked about the morality of going to Uzbekistan, and I always answer - go, mix with ordinary people, tell them about other ways of life, avoid state owned establishments and official tours. What Sting did was the opposite. To invoke Unicef as a cover, sat next to a woman who has made hundreds of millions from state forced child labour in the cotton fields, is pretty sick."
Well quite. And yet, to misquote his worship, I seriously doubt whether Sting cares in the slightest whether shmucks like Craig and us question his probity. He is hermetically sealed in his own self-righteous mindset.
Still, him accepting a wedge from despots, Trudie making films for Tesco - it must be said that the House of Sumner has moved into a most intriguing era of late, and we shall redouble the focus on its activities.
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