Caribbean news.Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit is stating that unless there is a security risk, Jamaican artiste Earlan ‘Alkaline’ Bartley cannot be prevented from performing in Dominica.
Just last week Vice President of Dominica Association of Evangelist Churches (DAEC), Arlington Wilson, said artistes like Alkaline should not be allowed to perform in Dominica and the association will be meeting to discuss the matter.
Alkaline. Photo courtesy ultramodernmedia.net
But according to Skerrit, who was a special guest on the Kairi FM Heng Program, on Monday, “in respect to the free movement of people within the Caribbean Community you can only prevent someone from coming to your country if there are security concerns in regards to that person coming in.”
“If you do not have a security concern and you decide not to allow the person to come in, you would be in fact violating the person’s rights and if you violate somebody’s rights then there will be consequences of the law,” he said. “We have to understand in Dominica we have signatories to certain agreements and at all times we have to respect those agreements, each one of us as an individual,as a group may have certain reservations and certain concerns.”
Skerrit further revealed that he hasn’t seen any reports from the regional security framework nor the national security framework which has indicated to him or the Ministry of National Security that Alkaline is a national security risk.
“There is nothing that the government can do to prevent the artiste Alkaline to come to Dominica,” he said. “So we can protest… it is our rights to do so once we get permission from the police…people these days believe they can just protest how they want with no regard for the rule of law, and these are the same people who come and talk about rule of law…”
Skerrit mentioned that the government is more than willing to discuss with the DAEC their concerns on the Alkaline matter.
“I have heard on the news that the Evangelical Association would like to speak to the government on the matter, we are more that willing to discuss with them their concerns but that is the most we can do, is to listen to their views and expressions but there is no action that the government will take in allowing Akaline to come to perform in Dominica,” he stated. “We have to be very careful that we don’t appear in anywhere in the region, not only in Dominica but throughout the region to be targeting unnecessarily Jamaican citizens.”
“Alkaline” is expected to be the main act for a concert to be held at the Saaman Gardens in Canefield on May 2nd. DAEC was very vocal in its stance last year against controversial artiste, Tommy Lee Sparta, who was to be featured at a concert in the island’s second town, Portsmouth.
The DAEC even held protest action and called for a boycott of the event, since, according to the organization, Tommy Lee’s music glorifies Satan. Article courtesy http://dominicanewsonline.com
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