Kanye West Faces Criticism From Human Rights Groups & Conservatives For Kazakhstan Performance

Human Rights Foundation & Bill O’Reilly Criticize Kanye West For Performing For “Human Rights Violator”

(AllHipHop News) Kanye West’s much publicized performance at the wedding of Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s grandson is being criticized on multiple fronts.

In a post on the Human Rights Foundation’s website, the organization’s president Thor Halvorssen says West would be imprisoned for expressing his freedom of speech if he lived in the central Asian country. Halvorssen refers to Kazakhstan as a “human rights wasteland.”

The former Soviet republic has been admonished by human rights groups for lack of a free press, restrictions on political expression, and a corrupt judiciary. Nazarbayev was elected in 2011 with 95.5% of the vote leading international observers to question the democratic reforms the nation agreed to enact.

HRF’s chairman, Garry Kasparov, also charges that the reported $3 million dollars West received for his private show was taken from Kazakhstan’s treasury. Kasparov nor the Human Rights Foundation provide any evidence that was the case.

While acknowledging West’s previous work in international human rights, the HRF compares West’s decision to play Nazarbayev’s event to Jennifer Lopez’s heavily criticized choice to perform for the president of Turkmenistan earlier this year. The Human Rights Foundation is asking the public to “hold them accountable.”

Bill O’Reilly also took aim at Kanye on his Fox News program suggesting that the Chicago rapper should perform for Syrian President Bashar Assad next.

Kanye West has yet to comment publicly on the matter.

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Watch O’Reilly’s segment about Kanye’s Kazakhstan performance and footage from the event in the videos below.