Ruins, Soba Kapassa, Luanda.
Dear Ms. Minaj-
Following your December 19th concert in Luanda, Angola, you tweeted “Angola has my heart.” More importantly, however, you also tweeted a picture of yourself with Isabel dos Santos, daughter of the president of Angola. You refer to Isabel in a comment using the phrase “girl power.”
![IMG_2215[1]](https://blog.amnestyusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/IMG_22151.jpg)
According to Forbes, “every major Angolan investment held by Dos Santos stems either from taking a chunk of a company that wants to do business in the country or from a stroke of the president’s pen that cut her into the action.” That does not seem to me like girl power. I consider girl power to be a woman who fights for her dreams and makes them happen without any advantages handed to her, earning everything she achieves. Like you, Ms. Minaj. I think girl power is women activists educating themselves on how to peacefully change their government, meeting with others to discuss how they can bring greater human and civil rights to their country. Like Rosa Conde and Laurinda Gouveia, on trial right now in Angola for doing those exact things. How much more compelling a statement on girl power if you had tweeted out a picture with them?
Not all human rights organizations approached you asking for the show to be canceled. You have global fans and those in Angola deserve the right to enjoy one of your charismatic performances as much an anyone else. What was hoped was the opportunity to provide information about human rights abuses in Angola and urge you to leverage your celebrity to bring attention to those issues and the persons most directly impacted.
![IMG_2220[1]](https://blog.amnestyusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/IMG_22201.jpg)
To confront a dictator, no matter how obliquely, is not something to be taken lightly. However, the mantle of your celebrity provides a cloak of protection not enjoyed by the brave activists you could have met. Like journalist Rafael Marques de Morais, whose research was the basis of the above-noted award winning article he co-wrote, exposing the ill gotten gains of Isabel. Or rapper MCK, whose socially conscious lyrics inspire a generation to reach for the rights they deserve but are denied.
Ms. Minaj, you said Angola has your heart. I hope you take the time to discover more of what truly makes her special. If you ever you decide to delve more deeply, please let me know. I would love to share all the things about Angola that have my heart.
" Human rights should make effort to stop America oil company doing business's with so called dictator president of Angola, leave Nick Minaj alone, she only going there for one night, the America government have been doing businesses in Angola for years.
And for the record, the so called dictator won't be at the concert anyway, we the ordinary Angolan people we will, so stop boycott art for the Angolan people, Nick Minaj represent art and we love art.
You guys should spend your effort and resources to solve the racial profiling problems and your own domestic terrorist that have access to guns legally over there. Police force in USA are killing blacks indiscriminately, do we hear Human Rights condemning this?? do something about that, stop labeling others as dictators, George Bush for the rest of the world he is remember as dictator, but we did not stop the american people from enjoying the good things that humanity have to offer"
The Angolan people love art, leave Nick Minaj alone..
Dear Mark I would like to add a bit of my observations to your comment if I may. There's no denying that it's about time these western governments stop feeding us this dictatorship minds and leave us alone to find our peace for a change. But we all know based on this reality we're living and quite often even complying, that this won't happen willingly on their part. We live an addictive cycle where a few thrive on blood and tears of others.
Hence the relevance of art. Art is supposed to inspire, to teach, to guide, to appease, to denounce, to preserve, to promote awareness and growth. Art is the starter of all movements and does(should) not conform.
Being a Rap fan myself I can'not deny the mastery of this MC when playing with her lyrics. The Lyrics are what troubles me on this environment where kids are loosing their parents for the lure of the easy life, where human trophies are norm with their naked bodies and souls. Gold worth much more than hugs. Queens are turned into bitches that shout to the winds their libido and turn their back on what made them. "Hustling" has turned us, we the people into steps of the lather.
No, Nicky Minaj does not deserve my respect nor yours because while our young and old brothers and sisters are being lynched here in the American soil and elsewhere, Angola included, she perpetrates the old stereotype of the African and African American as the uneducated strictly sexual and violent being who lives for that cash money and guetto toughness. A puppet for the industry. One of their many weapons to keep us blindfolded, ignorant and with low standards and dreams. With fame comes responsibility. Given in the wrong hands it becomes a weapon of mass destruction.
Very well written. I know Angola is making strides to becoming more open and modern; I hope they succeed. I doubt Minaj had the the time or access to truly know what's happening there
i think we Jesus Christ is the one who are wiling to solve thoese all problems we are facing because human has no ability to govern other human, thats why the world is problematic before we born and it will be for al generations. So Nick Minage concert in angola is coming to confirm my point of view
It's great to make it transparent and to crit the process but I as a non-reader on occasion sees the music industry as nothing but good.
Music is music, politics is other think.
Either Nicki is clueless, or she is in on it. Both options make for wrong decision making.