PM says she was deeply hurt by racist attacks

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor -Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says she was deeply af­fect­ed by re­cent racist at­tacks di­rect­ed at her, not be­cause of the per­son­al in­sults, but be­cause they re­flect­ed a loss of hu­man­i­ty that threat­ens Trinidad and To­ba­go’s so­cial fab­ric.

Speak­ing at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter’s African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day cel­e­bra­tion at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the re­cent at­tacks un­der­scored the need for cit­i­zens to re­ject prej­u­dice and em­brace the prin­ci­ples of uni­ty em­bod­ied by Eman­ci­pa­tion.

“Re­cent­ly, I, too, have been the tar­get of words root­ed in deep racial prej­u­dice. I will not pre­tend they did not af­fect me,” she said.

“But the hurt I felt was not for my­self. I have served long enough to un­der­stand that pub­lic life de­mands re­silience.”

In­stead, she said what sad­dened her most was wit­ness­ing peo­ple aban­don their shared hu­man­i­ty.

“Some­times we for­get our hu­man­i­ty and get caught up in the lan­guage of di­vi­sion. No na­tion can ever sur­vive in that re­gard,” she said, adding that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s fu­ture de­pends on cit­i­zens as­pir­ing and achiev­ing to­geth­er.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar used the oc­ca­sion to ar­gue that African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day is not on­ly a com­mem­o­ra­tion of the abo­li­tion of slav­ery but al­so a re­minder to re­ject “the chains of prej­u­dice, ha­tred, ig­no­rance and fear.”

She said words have the pow­er to ei­ther wound or heal and warned that racial di­vi­sion weak­ens the na­tion.

“They can di­vide a na­tion or unite one,” she said, adding that Trinidad and To­ba­go has al­ways been at its strongest when its peo­ple “have cho­sen one an­oth­er over di­vi­sion.”

“As Prime Min­is­ter, I will al­ways serve every cit­i­zen equal­ly, be­cause this of­fice be­longs to every cit­i­zen,” she de­clared.

The Prime Min­is­ter was seem­ing­ly ref­er­enc­ing leaked au­dio pur­port­ed to be a con­ver­sa­tion be­tween Genevieve Hadeed and her rel­a­tive Star Sab­ga, who used a deroga­to­ry term to ref­er­ence peo­ple of In­di­an de­scent.

Ear­li­er in her ad­dress, Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­flect­ed on the sig­nif­i­cance of African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day, de­scrib­ing it as a time to re­mem­ber the mil­lions of African women, men and chil­dren who were forcibly tak­en from their home­lands through the transat­lantic slave trade.

She said they ar­rived in the Caribbean stripped of their free­dom, fam­i­lies, lan­guages and even their hu­man­i­ty, but car­ried “an un­con­quer­able spir­it” that no cru­el­ty could ex­tin­guish.

“From unimag­in­able suf­fer­ing emerged ex­tra­or­di­nary re­silience,” she said, ar­gu­ing that their de­scen­dants helped lay the foun­da­tions of Trinidad and To­ba­go through their labour, courage and en­dur­ing con­tri­bu­tions to every sphere of na­tion­al life.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said African Eman­ci­pa­tion was not sole­ly the sto­ry of one com­mu­ni­ty but the be­gin­ning of the mod­ern sto­ry of T&T.

Iden­ti­fy­ing her­self as the daugh­ter of de­scen­dants of In­di­an in­den­tured labour­ers, she said her an­ces­tors ar­rived in a coun­try al­ready trans­formed by the tri­umph of eman­ci­pat­ed Africans.

“The op­por­tu­ni­ties they found and the fu­ture they helped build were made pos­si­ble by those who had first en­dured slav­ery, re­sist­ed op­pres­sion, and won their free­dom,” she said.

She said every com­mu­ni­ty that fol­lowed, in­clud­ing those from In­dia, Eu­rope, Chi­na, the Mid­dle East, Syr­ia, Lebanon and the First Peo­ples, had en­riched the na­tion, but stressed that the coun­try’s di­verse ori­gins should nev­er be­come a source of di­vi­sion.

“Our jour­neys be­gan dif­fer­ent­ly, but our des­tiny be­came one,” she said, de­scrib­ing di­ver­si­ty as T&T’s “great­est strength.”

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so reaf­firmed her Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to pre­serv­ing the lega­cy of Eman­ci­pa­tion by strength­en­ing pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion and out­reach ini­tia­tives sur­round­ing the ob­ser­vance.

She urged min­is­ters to en­sure that the prin­ci­ples of dig­ni­ty, fair­ness, equal­i­ty and in­clu­sion guide every min­istry and state agency, while thank­ing mem­bers of the diplo­mat­ic corps for join­ing the cel­e­bra­tion and en­cour­ag­ing con­tin­ued in­ter­na­tion­al part­ner­ships built on free­dom, equal­i­ty and hu­man dig­ni­ty.