Bjork Angers Chinese Government

3/8/2008
Mallory Groff
Bjork has made the Chinese government take a stand on foreign artists playing in the country.

According to E! Online, Bjork's pro-Tibet statements at a concert recently in Shanghai have angered the Chinese government.

Bjork has been a supporter of the "Free Tibet" movement for a long time. She was even a part of the San Francisco Free Tibet concert in 1996. At the end of her concert in Shainghai, she chanted "Tibet" and "Declare Independence." Concert go-ers did not boo the singer but left the concert quickly.

China's Ministry of Culture has stated, "We will further tighten controls on foreign artists performing in China in order to prevent similar cases from happening in the future." The minister went on to say, "We shall never tolerate any attempt to separate Tibet from China and will no longer welcome any artists who deliberately do this."

The Chinese government said that her outburst was unprofessional and offended Bjork fans in China. In response to the controversy, Bjork posted this on her Web site, "I am not a politician. I am first and last a musician and as such I feel my duty to try to express the whole range of human emotions. The urge for declaring independence is just one of them but an important one that we all feel at some times in our lives."

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