It’s estimated he’s worth in excess of £150m, but Sting agreed to perform for a regime that opposes the human rights he proclaims to uphold, for £1m more.

On the 11th June 1988 Sting launched the Nelson Mandela concert at Wembley with his song ‘Set Them Free’. It was just one of many laudable and poignant contributions that Sting - real name Gordon Sumner - has made to raising awareness and funds for a diversity of human rights issues over the years. This involvement began in 1981 when he was asked to take part in ‘The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball’ the fourth in a series of benefit shows staged by the British arm of Amnesty International. In an interview several years later, Sting acknowledged that prior to this he knew nothing about Amnesty International and its work, nor the existence and extent of torture throughout the world. The benefit show proved instrumental in provoking a whole range of artists to take action for a variety of social and political issues over the years to come - including Band Aid and Live Aid - with which Sting was also involved.

So what has happened to the ethical framework supposedly at the root of these humanitarian and philanthropic impulses so often displayed by Sting? Lots of people have been asking this since it recently came to light that back in October he had performed in Uzbekistan for a fee of between one and two million pounds. For those unfamiliar with Uzbekistan it is a country situated in Central Asia and run by the dictator Islam Karimov with one of the most appalling and widely condemned records on human rights. Accusations of murder and torture are rife, its people are poverty stricken, and there is environmental destruction of a devastating nature. The Environmental Justice Foundation just this week issued a new report documenting how its cotton production, which benefits ‘a small, corrupt, ruling elite’, continues to use forced child labour and ‘remains one of the most exploitative enterprises in the world’. Sting was hired by Karimov’s daughter and heir Gulnara Karimova for what was purportedly an arts and cultural festival, but what Craig Murray, former rebel UK ambassador to Uzbekistan describes on his blog as ‘an event specifically designed to glorify a barbarous regime’.

So what exactly is Sting’s response to those who wonder at his motives in accepting such a commission? First of all he claimed to believe it had been backed by Unicef who responded by saying that they were ‘quite surprised’ to hear this. Sting also stated that while he was aware of the President’s reputation in the arena of human rights, he felt 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.’

One can’t help but be cynical about this, given that that the price of a ticket to attend the concert was forty five times the average salary in Uzbekistan! Its impossible too, to ignore that huge figure that Sting was paid for his performance, impossible not to question his real motives.
 
Behind all the hype and sanctimonious protestations, it is difficult not to hear echoes of what was supposedly said to Craig Murray by the Foreign Office after he made a stand following the torture and death of a victim of the regime: ‘moral questions aren’t our business’.  Can Sting have turned tail?