Guyana: Akon Again · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Akon's publicity firm has released an extended video of the incident which they believe proves his innocence.
Akon has done it again – created controversy in the Caribbean.  This time, Guyana is his territory of choice.  At a concert in Guyana's National Stadium that was part of the regional Carifesta celebrations, the hip-hop singer was crowd surfing his way across the sea of fans as he tried to reach a camera platform in the middle of the audience.  A few celebrity-struck supporters got there before he did and there seems to have been a skirmish as Akon tried to mount the platform.  Once he alighted onto the stand, he slapped one of the women hard enough to appear to send her reeling.
Video footage of the incident is all over the Internet and Guyanese bloggers are interpreting this latest Akon outburst as a demonstration of the singer's misogyny.  Living Guyana questions why the country's mainstream media failed to mention the incident in their coverage of the concert:
In all the local reports about this concert why did (they)…not report that Akon physically assaulted two females in full view of thousands of Guyanese?
Akon has a reputation of assaulting people in various forms. He dry humped with a fifteen year old young lady in Trinidad and threw a boy off the stage in the US. This guy is clearly a lunatic and needs to be locked up (sounds familiar?) to protect him from continuing his assault on innocent people.
He is even more outraged when he finds out how much Akon was paid for his performance, calling it “a US$160,000 slap in the face of Guyanese women”:
This Akon incident is another example of the kind of eye pass Guyanese have come to suffer and in fact happily tolerate. Imagine 20,000 people were there and not one had raised this moment of abuse of a Guyanese woman. Any man with any principles would have defended this woman.
This is a travesty. We call on Minister Rohee to condemn Akon and to bar him from ever entering Guyana again. Whoever this lady is she needs to get a good lawyer and sue this idiot.
Interestingly enough, Guyana911 places the blame squarely at the feet of the ladies:
Earlier when those clowns tried to get on stage…they were pushed off. You don't interrupt a concert or a national event like that. When that happens sometimes physical effort is needed to straighten out stuff.
If those two jokers want to crawl on the platform, whats Akon to do? Stand and hold the mic and just watch them? Or is he supposed to perform and ignore them while they show off their shit.
He should of punched their ass off. Teach them some self control.. Everybody knows Akon rightfully hates a woman that shows her ass off.
I'm not seeing how what Akon did was wrong.
Either way, Signifyin’ Guyana thinks there are bigger issues at stake:
One of the really bothersome negatives I encountered during Carifesta was something bigger than its lack of focus (I'm still scratching my head about the relevance of some of the events, for instance), but Akon presence aside, my biggest problem with it all was the lack of inclusion of younger voices on discussions about the condition of the Caribbean region.