Lopez was performing over the weekend in the small Soviet bloc country of Turkmenistan at an event hosted by the China National Petroleum Corporation. It was there that she, in the words of her publicist, "graciously obliged" a request to serenade the birthday boy, president Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow. "It was our pleasure. And we wish you the very happiest birthday," she said at the time. A Human Rights Watch report from just this past April cited the country's "high levels of repression," "harassment and intimidation of journalists" and "longstanding use of imprisonment as a tool for political retaliation." It did not, however, mention any predilection for Pitbull collaborations. On Sunday, Human Rights Foundation president Thor Halvorssen said that Lopez's actions "utterly destroy the carefully crafted message she has cultivated with her prior involvement with Amnesty International's programs in Mexico aimed at curbing violence against women," and asked, " What is the next stop on her tour, Syria? The dictator of Kazakhstan's birthday is July 6, maybe she will also pay him a visit?"

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Lopez's publicist said that the event was not political, and was sponsored by the China National Petroleum Corp., and "Had there been knowledge of human rights issues any kind, Jennifer would not have attended," the Associated Press reports.

According to the State Department's latest report on human rights in Turkmenistan, "security officials tortured and beat criminal suspects, prisoners, and individuals deemed critical of the government to extract confessions and as a form of punishment."

"Although the constitution declares Turkmenistan to be a secular democracy and a presidential republic, the country has an authoritarian government controlled by the president, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov," the report says.

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