Nailah calls for empathy amid Kaia Sealy controversy

So­ca artiste Nailah Black­man is call­ing for em­pa­thy and uni­ty amid the on­go­ing con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing Ka­ia Sealy, say­ing she felt over­whelmed by what has been hap­pen­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

In a video post­ed to so­cial me­dia last night, Black­man said she usu­al­ly avoids speak­ing on mat­ters that do not di­rect­ly con­cern her be­cause “it’s very easy to be mis­un­der­stood”, but said she felt com­pelled to speak out.

“Word of the day to­day is em­pa­thy,” she said, “Em­pa­thy is a hu­man emo­tion that al­lows one to feel and un­der­stand what some­one else is go­ing through from their per­spec­tive.”

Black­man said that while so­ca artistes are ex­pect­ed to en­ter­tain peo­ple and “bring the vibes and be in good spir­its”, she could no longer stay silent.

“I’ve been see­ing what’s been go­ing on to good peo­ple, law-abid­ing cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go, day in, day out,” she said.

Ref­er­enc­ing the Ka­ia Sealy mat­ter, Black­man said: “What is go­ing on right now with Ka­ia Sealy is not right.”

Her com­ments came amid grow­ing pub­lic de­bate over the charges laid against Sealy and po­lice ac­tion tak­en against pro­test­ers out­side the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions yes­ter­day.

On the same day ri­ot po­lice shut down a protest out­side the DPP’s of­fice, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro brought in­to force 15 no-protest zones across Trinidad and To­ba­go un­der the State of Emer­gency reg­u­la­tions.

The re­strict­ed ar­eas in­clude the Par­lia­ment and Par­lia­men­tary Com­plex, the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent, the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, po­lice sta­tions, pris­ons, army bases, air­ports, and the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions.

Un­der the le­gal or­der, pub­lic protests or demon­stra­tions are pro­hib­it­ed with­in 500 me­tres of the list­ed lo­ca­tions.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice said protests are still al­lowed dur­ing the State of Emer­gency, but they must re­main peace­ful and out­side the re­strict­ed zones.

Sealy, 24, is fac­ing mul­ti­ple charges linked to a dead­ly in­ci­dent on Jan­u­ary 20 at the cor­ner of Col­lege Road and Bassie Street Ex­ten­sion, St Au­gus­tine.

Fol­low­ing a vir­tu­al hear­ing on Tues­day, four ad­di­tion­al charges were laid against Sealy for al­leged gun and am­mu­ni­tion of­fences. The charges in­clude pos­ses­sion of a firearm, pos­ses­sion of am­mu­ni­tion, pos­ses­sion of a firearm to en­dan­ger life, and dis­charg­ing a firearm with­in 40 me­tres of a pub­lic place.

She was al­so charged with three counts of shoot­ing with in­tent to cause griev­ous bod­i­ly harm at po­lice of­fi­cers and manslaugh­ter in con­nec­tion with the death of Joshua Sama­roo dur­ing the in­ci­dent.

Po­lice said yes­ter­day that while war­rants had been is­sued for some of the charges, they had not yet been ex­e­cut­ed, as Sealy re­mains out of the ju­ris­dic­tion.

Black­man said she want­ed peo­ple in po­si­tions of au­thor­i­ty to show com­pas­sion.

“But when things like this hap­pen every day and it just goes by un­no­ticed, un­dealt with, no jus­tice, I want to ask any­body in a po­si­tion of pow­er, any­body in a po­si­tion to do some­thing, our na­tion’s lead­ers, have some em­pa­thy,” she said.

She al­so called on cit­i­zens to unite and de­mand change.

“And who is go­ing to help us? No­body. We. We are go­ing to help us. So if we can’t come to­geth­er and say enough is enough, day in, day out, what’s go­ing on in this coun­try, to­day I just feel over­whelmed,” she said.

She end­ed the video by say­ing, “Can we please have some em­pa­thy? Can we please have some em­pa­thy? Let us stand to­geth­er and change our coun­try.”