Black Immigrant Daily News

Les dernières intempéries ont causé des dégâts importants au niveau du pont de Concorde. Une mission d’études géotechniques est en cours avec pour finalité la reconstruction de l’ouvrage 

France-Antilles Martinique

450 mots – 28.09.2022

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Black Immigrant Daily News

by Khaila Gentle

BELIZE CITY, Fri. Sept. 23, 2022

In a letter addressed to Hon. Patrick Faber, the chairperson of the UDP Nominations Committee has informed the Collet area representative that his application to once again be the party’s standard bearer of that division was denied. That letter accuses Hon. Faber of failing to comply with at least three articles in the United Democratic Party’s constitution by publicly criticizing the party through a series of posts made on his official Facebook page. The controversial move has polarized not only some residents of the Collet division but members of the United Democratic Party itself.

On September 23, three days after the letter to Faber was issued, area representative for the Albert division, Hon. Tracy Panton, wrote to UDP chairman, Michael Peyrefitte, questioning the authenticity of the letter and expressing her concern regarding the matter.

“I…ask for your kind intervention for the letter to be immediately retracted and for Hon. Faber’s interest to represent the United Democratic Party Collet be re-considered post haste,” she said.

Hon. Panton noted that the issuance of the letter seemed “misguided,” since the UDP’s National Party Council (NPC) had agreed that “current sitting parliamentarians would not be subject to the same application process as new aspirants.”

Earlier, in August, the NPC came to an agreement that all party members would remove any negative posts regarding the UDP—and its leader—from their social media pages. In addition to making his own posts, Hon. Patrick Faber also re-shared several advertisements by now ousted UDP member Delroy Cuthkelvin. (Despite being removed from the party, Cuthkelvin has continued to express his discontent with the party, and particularly with party leader, Hon. Moses “Shyne” Barrow.)

In addition to Hon. Tracy Panton, both the vice chairman of the party, Alberto August, and UDP Caribbean Shores standard bearer Lee Mark Chang have spoken out against the denial of Faber’s application. On Friday, Chang posted on his public social media page, “If Patrick, Tracy, or Alberto [are] out, I am out too”—a statement that was met with agreement by many party supporters.

Also weighing in on the matter this past weekend, however, was former Belmopan area representative John Saldivar. He spoke out in support of the decision, stating that it came as no surprise.

Saldivar noted, “We have been grappling with this Patrick Faber issue for some time now.”

According to Saldivar, both the UDP’s Central Executive and the NPC have attempted to urge Faber to “cease and desist” on several occasions, but he has only ever responded disrespectfully. The former area representative shared on his social media page an email from Hon. Faber sent on August 12 in response to a letter from the party chairman. The email states, simply, “ain’t gonna happen. I won’t miss the company of the majority ****heads on the central executive anyhow.”

During that month, Faber had been removed from the UDP’s Central Executive Committee for his continued criticism of the party’s leaders.

Hon. Patrick Faber has served a total of five terms as the Collet division’s area representative and is currently the most senior member of the opposition in the House of Representatives. Despite his checkered past, which consists of a series of domestic violence accusations, he has maintained a vast amount of support from the residents of his constituency.

Notably, in March of 2011, Hon. Faber, as the then chairman of the UDP Nominations Committee, wrote a letter to the then Orange Walk East representative, Marcel Cardona, informing him that Cardona had been removed from the party for publicly declaring his “hostility to, and non-support of the UDP Administration’s Budget and the UDP Government generally.”

In an ironic twist of fate, Hon. Patrick Faber now finds himself in a position similar to Cardona’s.

According to an internal message to the party from UDP leader Hon. Moses “Shyne” Barrow, the rejection of Hon. Faber’s application could be reconsidered, but the Collet area representative has until the end of this month to “cure his breaches to the Party Constitution” and reapply for the standard bearer position.

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Black Immigrant Daily News

BELIZE CITY, Mon. Sept. 26, 2022

The apparently self-inflicted death of Damacio Coc, a captain within the Belize Defence Force, has left his family and friends reeling and in utter disbelief. Captain Coc, 33, was found hanging from a bed sheet in his cell at the Belize Central Prison by a prison guard during a routine check on Sunday morning at around 10:30, and the results of an initial investigation are pointing to suicide as the cause of his death.

Capt. Coc was reportedly remanded on August 25 of this year after breaching a protection order placed against him by his wife, Angelica Escalante. He was awaiting a bail hearing and had been imprisoned for just one month, alone in a cell in the Tango 10 section of the prison, reports say.

He was seen alive early Sunday morning during a routine search at around 7:00 a.m., and sometime around 8:10 a.m. again, according to Virgilio Murillo, CEO of the Kolbe Foundation, which manages the prison. It was around 10: 30 a.m. that a prison guard saw a white sheet covering the door of Coc’s cell and, after moving it to see inside, he discovered the soldier’s lifeless body.

According to Murillo, there was no indication that Coc was mentally unstable or prone to self-harm, and he reportedly told the prison guard on duty that he was doing fine when asked during the 8: 00 a.m. check.

“Instinctively, I imagine the guard decided to stop and check with him, and the last thing he told the guard at about 8:10 was that he was all right. He didn’t say much, based on what the guard is saying, he’s saying that he never looked depressed or anything like that, so he took it to mean that he was okay and there was nothing to worry about,” Murillo said.

Without providing any details about prison policy, Murillo noted that the soldier was placed in a cell by himself.

“The placement for Mr. Coc was quite appropriate. His placement was determined based on a classification process that we have,” Murillo said.

Expressions of condolences and disbelief flooded social media following the announcement of Coc’s passing. Some comments on social media point to a troubled relationship between Coc and his wife. One close family member suggested that the strained relations between the two led to the protection order, but Coc, because of his love for the woman and their children, refused to leave the relationship still seeing the family even with the restraining order in place some reports suggest.

One of the family members remarked, “I wished u listened! I wish I could have been a better cousin, I told u that the way I was treating u wasn’t because I wanted to but because of ur wife!”

Suggestions are that the placement of a protection order against Coc, known to be a career soldier and upstanding man by all accounts, was frivolous.

“Damacio Coc did not deserve to be there in the first place. I checked on you when I could, Bro, and was looking forward to hearing you being freed, was looking forward to this Thursday,” another friend of Coc posted on social media, hinting that this coming Thursday would have been the date of his bail hearing.

But in a social media post that has since been deleted, Angelica Escalante claims that she was in an abusive relationship with the solider.

“It is no secret that Damacio and I were going through a divorce, it is also no secret that I had a restraining order on him. I cut everyone related to him off because when I was getting beat up and fighting for my if everyone would tell me to leave him but when I did and I made the reports and he was sent to prison, everyone close to him started blame me for him being sent back there,” Escalante stated in the post. She went on to say that she still had not accepted the news and refused to believe that he committed suicide.

“Things were bad between us but I wanted him to get better.. I wanted the drinking to stop, I loved him and I wanted him to be a better person for our daughter,” Escalante further said in the post.

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Black Immigrant Daily News

Incarcerated dancehall artiste Vybz Kartel is engaged. His fianc?e, Sidem Ozturk spoke about their relationship in an interview with journalist Lisa Evers on Fox 5 New York on Tuesday night.

“We were just calling each other hubby and wifey, and he was like, ‘Calling you wifey or you calling me hubby is not serious enough’; so he was like, ‘You are my fianc?e, we’re gonna get married’,” a gushing Ozturk, who previously worked as a social worker in London, UK, said.

Adding that the proposal happened during an authorised visit at the prison where Vybz Kartel, whose real name is Adidja Palmer, is currently serving a life sentence for the 2011 murder of Clive ‘Lizard’ Williams.

Ozturk, who said she studied psychology, began corresponding with Vybz Kartel in 2015. Four years later, she packed her bags and moved to Kingston to be closer to the man with whom she had fallen in love.

She is now also the muse for his latest project, the ‘True Religion’ EP, which is to be released on September 30.

A preview shared to the Instagram page of Vybz Kartel recently.

“He’s smart. I love his heart; he’s got an amazing heart. He’s so giving; he’s so loving. I like to call him my angel. He’s an angel in my life, and I can’t deny the way he makes me feel and how happy he makes me feel. So, to actually be here, in Jamaica, engaged to Addi is a dream come true. I still haven’t processed it properly in my head,” she said.

She said there’s no engagement ring as she did not want one. Instead, she’s hoping that the two will be able to tattoo their names on their ring fingers one day.

Vybz Kartel and his long-time common-law wife, Tanesha ‘Shorty’ Johnson reportedly ended their relationship in 2018. The couple has three children, two of whom are following in Vybz Kartel’s footsteps and pursuing music careers.

In September 2020, Vybz Kartel and his co-accused were granted conditional leave to go to the UK Privy Council to challenge their murder conviction. They are aiming to have his conviction overturned, and if that happens, Ozturk can have her very own fairytale.

“Love just wins; his love is so strong. It takes over everything, and to know Addi is to love Addi,” she said.

The Fox 5NY interview was also reposted on the Instagram account for the incarcerated entertainer with the caption: Who vex? Drink water & mind yuh business! @sidemozturk ??? #fox5 @lisaevers.

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