London, March 19 : The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have cancelled the first big engagement of their Platinum Jubilee Tour amid indigenous rights row. According to Daily Mail, Kate Middleton and Prince William were scheduled to kick off their Caribbean tour with a trip to a cocoa farm in Belize on Sunday. The villagers in Indian Creek had staged a protest terming the visit as “colonialism” and a “slap in the face”. They further said that William and Kate’s helicopter was given permission to land on their football field without consultation. Sebastian Shol, chairman of Indian Creek village, said: ‘We don’t want them to land on our land, that’s the message that we want to send. They could land anywhere but not on our land.’ Village youth leader Dionisio Shol said the way the visit had been handled raised the issue of ‘colonialism’. He said, “For us it really hits right at home because of the treatment. The organiser said we had to let them use the football field and that people were coming to our village and it had to look good. “But they didn’t want to divulge who. Eventually somebody said it was Prince William coming to our village. That’s where the first issue arose. These are high-profile people, we respect them, but they also have to be giving respect to the comm ty leaders. Giving comm ty leaders commands did not sit well with the comm ty.” According to Daily Mail, the protest was part of a long-running row over communal land rights. The royal family had planned to visit the Akte’iL Ha cacao farm in the foothills of the Maya mountains. RNJ
