Dr. Anthony Achong recently rendered a decisive GUILTY verdict against PANart on When Steel Talks (WST), which is the Supreme Court of the Pan world. Dr. Achong, who is a distinguished Pan Scientist, Physicist, Advisor to the Steelpan Tuners Guild of Trinidad & Tobago, and author of the preeminent, steelpan tuning book entitled, ''Secrets of the Steelpan - Unlocking the Secrets of the Science, Technology, Tuning and Operation of the Steelpan'', is a highly credible Supreme Court Justice, if not the Chief Justice where steelpan tuning is concerned. Dr. Achong wrote the steelpan tuning book after all, all 1200 pages of it!
This case was brought before the High Court on WST in order to publicly charge Felix Rohner, et al. with Fraud (claiming that the Hang/Pang based instruments are new and unique), Theft of Intellectual Property (stealing old and discarded, flawed steelpan designs from Trinidad and claiming them as his own), and Defamation of Character (insisting that the steelband community and the people of Trinidad had ''lost their roots''). If you can imagine the sheer number of people who were defamed by this ill-conceived statement on the part of Felix Rohner, one can only estimate the number of individual counts of defamation he is guilty of, seeing that he basically defamed an entire nation of people (Trinidadian negroes).
During the case, Michael Paschko, editor of ''The Hang Blog'' and official online spokesperson of PANart also added another charge of Slander, of which he was later found guilty of by Dr. Achong, by claiming that Rudy Kendall, a managing partner of KaribPAN and purported author of the article in question, based the entire case on ''preconception, ignorance and misunderstanding.''
We demand that these defamatory, slanderous statements published on the HangBlog be retracted immediately, as well as all other articles published by PANart on their sites which are fraudulent in nature. This includes numerous passages on the Hang Wikipedia page which are fraught with the same lies as noted in the original charge.
In addition, we are calling on PANart to publicly denounce their 2006 documentary entitled ''Hand - A Discreet Revolution'', as the patently false story of the Hang that it is.
PANart also owes an apology to the Hang/Handpan Community for knowingly and willfully misleading them with steelpan untruths for more than a decade.
Last but definitely not least, we would like to urge Felix Rohner, Sabina Schärer, Michael Paschko and others employed by PANart who have been enriched via Fraud, Intellectual Property Theft, Defamation of Character and Slander, to make a monetary donation to a worthy, steelband related cause in Trinidad.
We recommend that a significant donation be made to ''Expats & Locals For Pan'' (XL 4 Pan) in order that the donation and amount can be verfied by an official at the High Court (WST).
Michael Paschko has been absent from WST lately and it would be a great display of integrity on his part and on the part of PANart if he were to log on to WST and make an official statement on this matter!
We wil be waiting.
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