“Boil Your Enemies”: Sting once accepted the money of dictator Islam Karimov
For decades, a selection of musicians have been topping up their income by performing for unscrupulous people – the types of public figures that have received their money from dangerous regimes. Sting was previously a major name on this circuit and once controversially performed for the daughter of Islam Karimov, the dictator of Uzbekistan.
At the time, the former singer of The Police received international criticism for his actions. According to The Guardian, Sting received a payment between £1million and £2million to perform for Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of Karimov. As the leader of the country from 1989 until he died in 2016, Karimov was widely criticised for falsifying elections and committing human rights abuses.
Harrowingly, Karimov was also accused of boiling suspected terrorists to death, drafting children for child labour camps, and committing environmental atrocities. Yet Sting, an artist who has marketed himself as a humanitarian, still accepted the offer to perform for the bloodthirsty Karimov family.
A few months after the concert, The Guardian unearthed the story, and Sting attempted to defend his decision. He said: “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.”
He continued: “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.”
This incident in 2010 is not the only time Sting found himself in the press for similar reasons. In 2016, the musician was booked to perform at the wedding of Mikhail Gutseriev’s son, Said, at a show in Moscow, which reportedly cost $1billion in total. The wedding also featured shows by Jennifer Lopez and Enrique Iglesias. In 2021, Gutseriev Sr. was sanctioned by the EU for his ties to Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko.
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Gutseriev Sr. was also sanctioned by Downing Street. Government officials described him as a “long-standing associate of Lukashenko, who is responsible for serious violations of human rights and the repression of civil society and democratic opposition in Belarus”.
Seemingly, this was the wake-up call Sting needed to realise it was immoral to accept the aforementioned bookings while supposedly caring for humanity. In a statement to the Mirror, the musician said: “No oligarch in Britain, Russia or anywhere else is in any position to book a gig, a wedding or a party. Those days are over.”
Earlier this year, Sting agreed to sell the rights to his back catalogue to Universal Music in a deal worth up to $300m. Therefore, he should be able to find a way to survive the cost of living crisis without returning to the pockets of deadly dictatorships or questionable oligarchs.
