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| File: PM Kamla Persad-Bissessar with Spiritual Baptist leaders |
In a message to mark Emancipation Day, she said "we must never forget the pain borne by our ancestors for the freedom that we live today."
She added, "It is only through our commitment to the appreciation of diversity, and our dedication to protect liberty at all costs that those who come after us will experience the free will that our forefathers delivered to us. Let us honour the memory of those who fought in the centuries past, so that today, we could be free."
The full message is reproduced below:
I am deeply honoured to bring greetings to the national community as we commemorate Emancipation Day 2012. Trinidad and Tobago became the first nation in the world to declare Emancipation Day an official public holiday 27 years ago, out of the deep appreciation of the significance of this observance to the history and development of our people and our country.
On this day, our citizens gather in celebration and remembrance of the centuries of slavery brought to an end by sheer fortitude and faith that liberty would one day triumph.
For many, it is a bittersweet moment; the joy of the emancipation came after a long, hard and torturous struggle against inhuman treatment, stark inequality and cruelty. Then many accounts given by historians generally converge on the fact that slavery represented one of our lowest points in human history, a period when human beings were treated without compassion and where social tolerance was almost completely absent from the daily lives of the ruling class of that time.
The accounts given by historians also converge on the revelation of how the human spirit can triumph even in the face of immense adversity. It tells us that even as many people in the time of slavery were born, and unfortunately died never knowing freedom, they were driven by the powerful conviction that their work, their prayers and their suffering would benefit those who came after them.
Today, it is our history of struggle for equality, justice and freedom that has brought us to the point where we can stand together as one united people and one strong and stable nation.
One hundred and seventy eight years after the abolition of slavery and 174 years after the end of apprenticeship, we commemorate this Emancipation Day in the year of our 50th anniversary of independence. Both occasions coinciding bring to the top of the national consciousness the value we place in our social, economic and religious freedoms and the passions inspired in us by determining and forging our own future.
As we celebrate Emancipation Day therefore, we must never forget the pain borne by our ancestors for the freedom that we live today. It is only through our commitment to the appreciation of diversity, and our dedication to protect liberty at all costs that those who come after us will experience the free will that our forefathers delivered to us.
To all citizens of Trinidad and Tobago, I wish you all a joyful Emancipation Day. Let us honour the memory of those who fought in the centuries past, so that today, we could be free. May God Bless our great nation, Trinidad and Tobago.
Kamla Persad-Bissessar | Prime Minister of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago
The full message is reproduced below:
I am deeply honoured to bring greetings to the national community as we commemorate Emancipation Day 2012. Trinidad and Tobago became the first nation in the world to declare Emancipation Day an official public holiday 27 years ago, out of the deep appreciation of the significance of this observance to the history and development of our people and our country.
On this day, our citizens gather in celebration and remembrance of the centuries of slavery brought to an end by sheer fortitude and faith that liberty would one day triumph.
For many, it is a bittersweet moment; the joy of the emancipation came after a long, hard and torturous struggle against inhuman treatment, stark inequality and cruelty. Then many accounts given by historians generally converge on the fact that slavery represented one of our lowest points in human history, a period when human beings were treated without compassion and where social tolerance was almost completely absent from the daily lives of the ruling class of that time.
The accounts given by historians also converge on the revelation of how the human spirit can triumph even in the face of immense adversity. It tells us that even as many people in the time of slavery were born, and unfortunately died never knowing freedom, they were driven by the powerful conviction that their work, their prayers and their suffering would benefit those who came after them.
Today, it is our history of struggle for equality, justice and freedom that has brought us to the point where we can stand together as one united people and one strong and stable nation.
One hundred and seventy eight years after the abolition of slavery and 174 years after the end of apprenticeship, we commemorate this Emancipation Day in the year of our 50th anniversary of independence. Both occasions coinciding bring to the top of the national consciousness the value we place in our social, economic and religious freedoms and the passions inspired in us by determining and forging our own future.
As we celebrate Emancipation Day therefore, we must never forget the pain borne by our ancestors for the freedom that we live today. It is only through our commitment to the appreciation of diversity, and our dedication to protect liberty at all costs that those who come after us will experience the free will that our forefathers delivered to us.
To all citizens of Trinidad and Tobago, I wish you all a joyful Emancipation Day. Let us honour the memory of those who fought in the centuries past, so that today, we could be free. May God Bless our great nation, Trinidad and Tobago.
Kamla Persad-Bissessar | Prime Minister of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago
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