An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Hours af­ter the pro­mot­er for this week­end’s Freeze Con­cert was suc­cess­ful in se­cur­ing dance­hall and oc­ca­sion­al li­cences yes­ter­day, the two main artistes billed to per­form pulled out af­ter they were warned that lo­cal im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials would de­tain them up­on ar­rival in T&T and send them back to Ja­maica.

Kyle Yarde, who is one half of Clas­sic Kings Pro­mo­tions, said while they had won the bat­tle be­fore the San Fer­nan­do Li­cens­ing Com­mit­tee yes­ter­day, they had lost the war as the au­thor­i­ties con­tin­ued to look for rea­sons to shut down the event.

While he avoid­ed con­firm­ing that the No­vem­ber 16 con­cert, sched­uled to take place at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my, Tarou­ba, was of­fi­cial­ly can­celled as a re­sult, he said the two main acts—Na­jeeri and Chron­ic Law—had both opt­ed not to con­tin­ue with the show as they did not wish to face the em­bar­rass­ment and hu­mil­i­a­tion of be­ing de­tained at the air­port and then be­ing sent back to Ja­maica.

In­di­cat­ing they had been host­ing this event for the past two years with­out in­ci­dent, Yarde said the po­lice ob­jec­tions that it posed a threat to pub­lic safe­ty and would in­cite or en­cour­age gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties held no mer­it.

He said, “Some­one called us from Trinidad and said we re­ceived a let­ter that Im­mi­gra­tion was go­ing to de­ny the artistes en­try when they come to Trinidad.

“The artistes’ lawyers were al­so con­tact­ed by some­one in Trinidad and they got the same in­for­ma­tion, and they re­moved their lug­gage from the air­plane so they didn’t leave the coun­try. They are not com­ing to get em­bar­rassed and de­port­ed back to Ja­maica.”

Go­v­ana and Phenique were al­so billed to per­form.

Yarde said his busi­ness had tak­en a mas­sive hit with these de­vel­op­ments as they had al­ready in­vest­ed over $800,000 to se­cure the artistes, venue, agen­cies, ho­tels, air­fare, and ven­dors.

This es­ti­mat­ed fig­ure did not in­clude the cost for the rec­om­mend­ed strength of 100 po­lice con­sta­bles, 16 cor­po­rals, eight sergeants, four in­spec­tors, three ASPs, one supt, and one se­nior supt.

Yarde crit­i­cised the au­thor­i­ties as he said, “They don’t have a prop­er plan to fight crime, and I don’t know who came up with the idea to fight the pro­mot­ers.”

Flum­moxed that the ar­gu­ment of as­so­ci­at­ed gun vi­o­lence and gang ac­tiv­i­ty was now be­ing used by the po­lice to shut down le­git­i­mate events, Yarde said there were shoot­ings and mur­ders oc­cur­ring around Car­ni­val yet no par­ties or fetes had been can­celled.

Yarde said while his team would have worked late in­to the night to se­cure the ser­vices of oth­er artistes in a bid to put on the usu­al high-qual­i­ty event pa­trons were ac­cus­tomed to, the re­al­i­ty was that it would like­ly be can­celled.

Yarde is ex­pect­ed to ad­dress the un­fold­ing sit­u­a­tion, which he re­ferred to as “spite­ful”, dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Radis­son Ho­tel this morn­ing.

An at­tor­ney in the mat­ter said he was sad­dened that this was the ap­proach be­ing adopt­ed by the au­thor­i­ties, which he claimed was “dra­con­ian”.

He too agreed, “It shows the po­lice has no new ideas when it comes to crime fight­ing.”

A se­nior po­lice of­fi­cial de­fend­ed the process as he al­leged, “They try­ing to come through a back door.”

He in­sist­ed, “We are try­ing to save lives.”