Entertainers weigh in on protests, Samaroo-Sealy issue

Naris­sa Fras­er

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

As protests con­tin­ue over the Joshua Sama­roo and Ka­ia Sealy case, lo­cal en­ter­tain­ers have be­gun to use their so­cial me­dia plat­forms to speak out over what they have de­scribed as an in­jus­tice.

Protests have been led by Alyssa Phillip, Sealy’s for­mer school­mate, since Feb­ru­ary, days af­ter the Jan­u­ary 20 po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing and con­fronta­tion. Since then, the ac­tion has mush­roomed and gained mo­men­tum fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment of crim­i­nal charges to be laid against Sealy, in­clud­ing manslaugh­ter aris­ing out of Sama­roo’s death.

The de­ci­sion sent shock­waves through­out some quar­ters of the coun­try.

This, cou­pled with Phillip’s ar­rest last week and the move to im­ple­ment 15 no-protest zones un­der the State of Emer­gency Reg­u­la­tions, prompt­ed many to take to so­cial me­dia to crit­i­cise the po­lice and the Gov­ern­ment, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the protests were noth­ing more than “pub­lic­i­ty farm­ing” and “vic­tim gim­mick­ry.”

Now, some lo­cal en­ter­tain­ers have weighed in.

Dance­hall singer and pod­cast host KG took to In­sta­gram ex­press­ing his dis­ap­proval of “bla­tant in­jus­tice right in front our eyes.”

Hint­ing that not enough lo­cal en­ter­tain­ers were speak­ing up, he added, “And the same ones you take your hard-earned mon­ey to go sup­port have noth­ing to say. They con­tin­ue to keep their mouths shut ‘cause it doh have noth­ing to do with fete and par­ty.”

Muham­mad Muwak­il, lead singer of Free­town Col­lec­tive, al­so shared his thoughts.

“The idea of hav­ing to ask for per­mis­sion to protest from the very sys­tem you wish to protest against is a colo­nial holdover and is lu­di­crous at best,” he wrote.

He said a protest is meant to dis­rupt the norm to bring at­ten­tion to se­ri­ous is­sues. “The po­lice should on­ly be there to en­sure that no dam­age hap­pens to pub­lic in­fra­struc­ture and that no un­due vi­o­lence oc­curs. The idea that every time we protest, the po­lice show up to ‘break it up’ reeks of ar­cha­ic and op­pres­sive colo­nial norms.”

He lat­er re­leased a video in sup­port of Sealy and Phillip with im­ages of the protest as he sang Bob Mar­ley’s fa­mous No Woman, No Cry and his band’s pop­u­lar hit Kaya.

So­ca star Nailah Black­man called for em­pa­thy from the coun­try’s lead­ers. She plead­ed for the re­turn of “sweet T&T” in a short video.

She claimed that good and law-abid­ing cit­i­zens were fac­ing “in­jus­tice.”

“What is go­ing on right now with Ka­ia Sealy is not right. Trinidad needs help, and who is go­ing to help us? No­body. We. So if we can’t come to­geth­er and say enough is enough … I just feel over­whelmed.”

For­mer na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Queen Am­ri­ka Mutroo ref­er­enced a song ti­tled No Mer­cy, which she wrote in 2017. Along with videos from the re­cent protests, she post­ed, “This is a cry for jus­tice, not an in­cite­ment to vi­o­lence. As an artiste, my voice be­longs to the peo­ple.”

So­ca singer Ani­ka Berry showed her sup­port in the com­ments un­der this post as well.

La­dy La­va took to Face­book to post lyrics of the church hymn A Lit­tle More Oil In My Lamp, which pro­test­ers were singing as Phillip was ar­rest­ed.

Jazz singer Vaugh­nette Big­ford said tears came to her eyes watch­ing Phillip’s ar­rest. “Ah think ‘bout meh son too. Ah think ‘bout this coun­try that ah love so much. Ah think about many things that are cur­rent­ly hap­pen­ing and ah cry.”

Der­ron Sandy, spo­ken word artiste and po­et, al­so wrote a piece in trib­ute to Sealy.

So­ca artiste, Trinidad Kil­la, re­al name Kern Joseph, took to his so­cial me­dia, call­ing on T&T cit­i­zens to stand up against what he called in­jus­tice.

The “Right Down” singer called on a 100,000 strong to come out and fight against the cur­rent in­jus­tices in Trinidad.

He al­so said that while he sup­port­ed Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, he was now throw­ing his sup­port be­hind the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment.