In her Di­vali mes­sage to the na­tion Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar urged cit­i­zens to con­tin­ue to be ex­em­plars of this tol­er­ance and ac­cep­tance, and to keep giv­ing equal im­por­tance to all na­tion­al hol­i­days, re­gard­less of their re­li­gious ori­gins.

She said as we cel­e­brate this year’s Di­vali hol­i­day, let us al­so re­mem­ber that cur­rent­ly, across the globe, mil­lions of peo­ple are at war and con­flict due to their re­li­gious and eth­nic dif­fer­ences.

She said ac­cord­ing to the Gene­va Acad­e­my’s re­search, in 2023, there are 114 armed con­flicts, in­clud­ing some in­ter­na­tion­al wars, tak­ing place in our world.

These in­clude places like: Is­rael, Pales­tine, Rus­sia, Ukraine Iraq, Syr­ia, Yemen, Su­dan, the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Re­pub­lic of the Con­go, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, In­dia, Myan­mar, Pak­istan, Chi­na, Ar­me­nia, Mex­i­co, and Colom­bia.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go there­fore shines as a bea­con for glob­al tol­er­ance and we must nev­er forego our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to our na­tion’s chil­dren and our fu­ture gen­er­a­tions to en­sure that we con­tin­ue in this unique, blessed, and in­spi­ra­tional stead,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar added, “Yet, sad­ly, we are not im­mune from this glob­al trend of vi­o­lence and bru­tal­i­ty. We are cur­rent­ly liv­ing in a pe­ri­od of un­prece­dent­ed run­away crime and vi­o­lence which has thrown us in­to a des­o­late state of fear and per­se­cu­tion for the past few years.”

She said this, along with our cur­rent eco­nom­ic chal­lenges, has re­sult­ed in a vast ma­jor­i­ty of our cit­i­zens be­ing forced to cope dai­ly with an avalanche of neg­a­tive emo­tions: shock, pain, con­tempt, anger, anx­i­ety, fear, and hope­less­ness.

“Be­cause of this, cit­i­zens are now faced with the chal­lenge of find­ing a way to stay men­tal­ly healthy and spir­i­tu­al­ly whole, and to pre­vent our­selves from be­com­ing em­bit­tered, hate-filled, over­ly sus­pi­cious, and de­sen­si­tized,” she said.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader said she has al­ways per­son­al­ly coped with such try­ing times by seek­ing hope, com­fort, and guid­ance in God’s teach­ings across all re­li­gious di­vides and had of­ten found in­spi­ra­tion in the mean­ing of Di­vali.