Jennifer Lopez sang "Happy Birthday" to Turkmenistan's leader, a notorious dictator....and she's catching flack for the act because of serious human rights violations in the country. You can watch a video of the performance, likely from Turkemenistan state-run telivision, below.

Jennifer Lopez claimed she wouldn't have performed for the leader of Turkmenistan had she known about human rights issues...but obviously, nobody bothered to check.

Jennifer Lopez, the singer and actress, performed Saturday Night in Turkmenistan, the former Solviet bloc country with one of the worst human rights records in Asia.

Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, Turkmenistan's leader, attended the event, which a rep for Lopez described as an event hosted by China National Petroleum Corp that wasn't a political event.

China National Petroleum Corp is a Chinese state-run energy firm with financial interests in the oil-rich country to fill insatiable energy needs. They have a large presence in Turkmenistan, including an oil pipeline.

Berdimuhamedow has been resoundingly condemned for oppression; Human Rights Watch describes Turkmenistan as "among the most repressive in the world."

The Human Rights Watch website says that Turkmenistan "is virtually closed to independent scrutiny. Media and religious freedoms are subject to draconian restrictions, and human rights defenders and other activists face the constant threat of government reprisal. The authorities continue to use imprisonment as a tool for political retaliation and to restrict peoples' right to travel freely."

Lopez's publicist claimed that Lopez and her dancers singing the president "Happy Birthday" was a last minute request that she "graciously obliged" and that Lopez was not aware of human rights issues. Her performance fee wasn't disclosed.

Had they bothered to check, though, they would have found, among other more serious violations, that the Internet is rigidly censored and most social media is banned, which is why there was resounding silence on Twitter when Lopez's choreographer J.R. Taylor tweeted, upon landing, "The Turkmenistan Breeze feels amazing at night Kidz! I wonder were all my Turkmenistan followers are!? Hit me up!"

The tweet was later deleted.

See a video of Lopez performing below: