Hosein: Slavery, indentureship both brought suffering

Min­is­ter of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Sad­dam Ho­sein has re­ject­ed at­tempts to pit slav­ery against in­den­ture­ship, say­ing both sys­tems in­flict­ed suf­fer­ing on gen­er­a­tions of peo­ple and should not be treat­ed as com­pet­ing his­tor­i­cal ex­pe­ri­ences.

Re­spond­ing to com­ments by for­mer ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, Ho­sein said the com­par­i­son was "not a com­pe­ti­tion."

"All of our an­ces­tors strug­gled and suf­fered at the hands of our colo­nial mas­ters," he said, adding that at­tempts to rank one ex­pe­ri­ence above an­oth­er on­ly fu­el di­vi­sion.

Ho­sein's com­ments came as se­nior Gov­ern­ment fig­ures con­tin­ued to ac­cuse the Op­po­si­tion PNM of fos­ter­ing racial di­vi­sion fol­low­ing in­ci­dents dur­ing Eman­ci­pa­tion Day ob­ser­vances.

He crit­i­cised the PNM for what he de­scribed as its si­lence over racist re­marks di­rect­ed at the East In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty and ques­tioned whether Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les and oth­er se­nior par­ty of­fi­cials sup­port­ed state­ments made by par­ty col­league Marisa Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal. He al­so ac­cused the Op­po­si­tion of at­tempt­ing to cre­ate di­vi­sion and claimed it had failed to con­demn re­marks made by MP Ka­reem Mar­celle at a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing.

Sep­a­rate­ly, En­er­gy Min­is­ter and Oropouche East MP Roodal Mooni­lal is­sued a state­ment con­demn­ing what he de­scribed as the "dis­grace­ful and cru­el treat­ment" of Cul­ture Min­is­ter Michelle Ben­jamin and Pro­fes­sor Sel­wyn Cud­joe dur­ing Eman­ci­pa­tion Day cel­e­bra­tions.

Mooni­lal said Eman­ci­pa­tion Day should be a time to ho­n­our the abo­li­tion of slav­ery and unite cit­i­zens, not a plat­form for ha­tred or racial di­vi­sion. He ex­pressed sol­i­dar­i­ty with Ben­jamin and Cud­joe and called for "uni­ty, re­spect and de­cen­cy" in the na­tion­al dis­course.