By Anna Ramdass
Speaking outside the Treasury Building, Port of Spain, where the capital city came alive with festivities to celebrate African Emancipation Day, Rowley noted that The University of the West Indies (UWI) vice-chancellor Sir Hilary Beckles has been leading the “intellectual arguments” on behalf of Caricom with respect to reparations.
Rowley said Martin Luther King Jr had said the arc to freedom bends towards justice.
“We here gathered are on that arc; we genuinely believe that it will bend to a point in a day when justice would be recognized by all and it will be handed to those who deserve it,” he said.
“When we meet in Samoa, the Caribbean leaders took a decision this week to very forcefully speak to the Commonwealth as one voice, and there is one particular country with a new King (the United Kingdom) King Charles) and a Labour government with an outstanding mandate, and we look forward to the reaction in October,” said Rowley.
“Because I believe that until respect of people becomes acknowledged by those who hold authority, African people will continue to be viewed as second and third-class, and we will continue to have to fight for freedom and respect,” he added.
He emphasized the need for focus on respect, starting from respecting ancestors who were there when the hardships were meted out and survived it for the future of their progeny.
“Today, we need to respect their effort as we respect ourselves because out of that respect would come a desire to be the best that we can be against advice that we are worth nothing, or that we are limited in what we can achieve or that we are less in what we anticipate,” he said.
“Let us take pride in our ancestry, let us not be afraid to proclaim our Africanness, especially in today’s world where Africa is rising and rising to meet us, let us not be found wanting,” he said.
‘A mecca for the celebration’
Executive chair of the Emancipation Support Committee Zakiya Uzoma-Wadada said the celebration of African emancipation in Trinidad and Tobago was a national celebration because the freedom of Africans from enslavement was a gain for all humanity.
“None of us would have wanted to live in a world where a major ethnic group would have been enslaved,” she said. Trinidad and Tobago, she said, has to become the mecca for the celebration worldwide. She noted that this country was the first independent state to declare African Emancipation Day a holiday. According to The UWI, in July 2013, Caribbean leaders at the 34th Caricom Summit agreed to pursue reparations from Britain, based on representation made by Beckles.
