Trini­bad en­ter­tain­er Kashif Sankar, bet­ter known as Kman 6ixx, is ap­peal­ing to au­thor­i­ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go and across the Caribbean to re­con­sid­er re­stric­tions that have pre­vent­ed him from per­form­ing at events in re­cent years.

In an of­fi­cial state­ment re­leased this week, Sankar said he has spent the past three years build­ing a ca­reer in mu­sic and en­ter­tain­ment and be­lieves he de­serves an op­por­tu­ni­ty to demon­strate per­son­al growth and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

The ap­peal comes against the back­drop of re­stric­tions im­posed on sev­er­al T&T en­ter­tain­ers by re­gion­al au­thor­i­ties over con­cerns about gang vi­o­lence and pub­lic safe­ty.

In Feb­ru­ary 2024, au­thor­i­ties in St Kitts and Nevis banned Sankar from en­ter­ing the coun­try. Of­fi­cials said the de­ci­sion was based on se­cu­ri­ty as­sess­ments link­ing some Trini­bad en­ter­tain­ers to con­tent that pro­mot­ed vi­o­lence, glo­ri­fied gang ac­tiv­i­ty and posed po­ten­tial threats to pub­lic safe­ty.

Lat­er that year, St Kitts and Nevis al­so barred Richard “DJ Punz” Ro­mano, Loren­zo “Se­lec­tah Ren­zo” Homer and Jasse David Aguillera from en­ter­ing the twin-is­land fed­er­a­tion.

Sankar al­so faced re­stric­tions in the Ba­hamas in 2024 when au­thor­i­ties de­nied him en­try to per­form. The de­ci­sion was re­port­ed­ly based on in­tel­li­gence pro­vid­ed by the Roy­al Ba­hamas Po­lice Force con­cern­ing al­leged ac­tive gang af­fil­i­a­tions.

Ad­dress­ing those con­cerns in his state­ment, Sankar ac­knowl­edged that he had pre­vi­ous­ly been clas­si­fied as a high-risk in­di­vid­ual amid con­cerns over gang vi­o­lence in T&T, a des­ig­na­tion that af­fect­ed his abil­i­ty to se­cure per­for­mance op­por­tu­ni­ties.

“While I un­der­stand the con­cerns that ex­ist­ed at that time, I want the pub­lic and rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to know that I have grown, ma­tured and com­mit­ted my­self ful­ly to a dif­fer­ent path,” he said.

Sankar said he is now fo­cused en­tire­ly on his mu­sic ca­reer and on cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties through en­ter­tain­ment while con­tribut­ing pos­i­tive­ly to so­ci­ety.

The en­ter­tain­er urged au­thor­i­ties to re­view re­stric­tions af­fect­ing artistes who have demon­strat­ed pos­i­tive change and com­mit­ment to their ca­reers.

Sankar ar­gued that Caribbean artistes should be giv­en op­por­tu­ni­ties to show­case their tal­ents re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and called for what he de­scribed as fair con­sid­er­a­tion for those seek­ing a sec­ond chance.

Thank­ing sup­port­ers for their con­tin­ued en­cour­age­ment, Sankar said he re­mains com­mit­ted to pro­duc­ing mu­sic and en­ter­tain­ment while hop­ing his ap­peal reach­es de­ci­sion-mak­ers ca­pa­ble of cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for artistes seek­ing a brighter fu­ture.