Rapper Cardi B apologized on Tuesday after promoting a fundraiser in support of Armenia, prompting angry Azeri nationalists to condemn her.
Fighting erupted between Azerbaijan and the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh – a majority Armenian area – in late September. Nagorno-Karabakh considers itself an independent republic, Artsakh, and Armenia has complained that Azerbaijan’s clash with the separatists has overflowed into its sovereign territory. Azerbaijan has previously threatened to bomb Armenia’s only nuclear power plant, and Amnesty International accused Azerbaijan of using banned cluster bombs on civilians this week.
Despite a prominent human rights organization accusing Azerbaijan of bombing civilians, Azerbaijani nationalists on Twitter attacked the rapper, whose real name is Belcalis Almánzar, with the hashtag #cardibsupportsterrorism after she shared a fundraiser in support of Armenia to her 76 million Instagram followers.
According to Almánzar, she posted the fundraiser information after talking to a distressed Armenian real estate consultant who asked her to raise awareness on the issue.
“I woke up this morning and I’m seeing that me and my baby father are getting attacked,” she said. “Yesterday we were trying to sell a property that we have in Atlanta … And our consultant is Armenian and he was really in distress because he was saying there’s a lot of terrible genocides going on in his country, and he said: ‘Can you please post something for a cause, for a good cause, for Armenia?'”
“And we said: ‘Sure, why not?’ We love to support everybody,” she continued. “And then I wake up and I see a lot of people from Azerbaijan writing me things, writing me stuff, and I did not know that this is a war between two countries.”
At least 250 people have been killed in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, including civilians, the highest number of casualties since the end of the Nagorno-Karabakh War in 1994. The U.S. has yet to take a formal stance on the issue. Turkey, a NATO ally the United States is treaty-bound to defend, has openly supported the Turkic Azeri people. Armenia has accused Islamist Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of importing jihadists from Syria to help Baku.
In a voice message posted online, the rapper admitted that she did not really have any understanding of the conflict and was just trying to stop people from dying.
“It wasn’t in my place to post something, I should’ve done more research,” she explained. “But I don’t know what to believe. One side is telling me something, the other side is telling me something else. I just want peace. I love peace. I want everybody to get along. I don’t want people dying. Nothing. Why do you keep harassing me if keep apologizing for it? I don’t know. I don’t fucking know. Have a good night.”
The 27-year-old is no stranger to political controversy. Last month, she was subject to a defamation lawsuit for attacking and smearing Long Island beachgoers as “racist” supporters of Donald Trump, following the publication of a video appearing to show some sort of altercation between some beachgoers and her sister, Hennessy Almánzar.
Follow Ben Kew on Parler, Facebook, or Twitter. You can email him at bkew@breitbart.com.
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