CHESTER SAM­BRA­NO

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has tak­en is­sue with peo­ple who have spo­ken out against pay­ing repa­ra­tions to de­scen­dants of African slaves.

Last evening, Dr Row­ley host­ed Eman­ci­pa­tion cel­e­bra­tions at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Anns.

In his fea­ture ad­dress at the event, Dr Row­ley said one his­to­ri­an has de­scribed the de­scen­dants of the en­slaved as vic­tims of the African “cul­tur­al holo­caust”.

He said an­oth­er his­to­ri­an sug­gests that there should be “a Mid­dle Pas­sage Plan” for Africans, with Eu­rope giv­ing repa­ra­tions to ar­eas of the di­as­po­ra, sim­i­lar to the re-con­struc­tion de­signs of its “Mar­shall Plan”, af­ter World War II.

“You will, no doubt, be fa­mil­iar with the con­tin­u­ing ef­forts and ap­peals in this area to the for­mer Eu­ro­pean colonis­ers. Some, the di­rect ben­e­fi­cia­ries of this holo­caust, pre­fer to write new re­vi­sion­ist his­to­ry to pre­tend that it didn’t hap­pen,” Dr Row­ley ob­served.  “Some pat us on the shoul­der to say, ‘let’s just move on, it couldn’t be all that bad’.”

“And most re­cent­ly, bold­faced mo­rons are now even sug­gest­ing that we should be grate­ful for ‘the ben­e­fits that were be­stowed’ up­on us by slav­ery through lan­guage and ac­cul­tur­a­tion," he said.

But the Prime Min­is­ter added that in spite of Eu­rope’s "cal­cu­lat­ed at­tempts at de-hu­man­is­ing us, there was al­ways re­sis­tance."

He said as C.L.R. James, one of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s fore­most lit­er­ary fig­ures con­clud­ed:

“African slaves fought back, pow­er­ful­ly, with the con­tents of their minds … the mem­o­ries, the log­ic and re­silience of their peo­ple.”

"I speak proud­ly to­day that what James iden­ti­fied some eighty years ago con­tin­ues to be re­alised in the con­tri­bu­tions of cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go to the world stage,” the Prime Min­is­ter as­sert­ed.

“For ex­am­ple, we have cre­at­ed and giv­en the world our Steel Pan, our Ca­lyp­so, our So­ca mu­sic—which have gone on to in­flu­ence oth­er mu­si­cal forms, even in Africa!  We have done so, cre­at­ing the world’s first gas-based econ­o­my; de­vel­oped in­no­va­tions in the oil in­dus­try; es­tab­lished the world-class Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate,” he said.

Dr Row­ley not­ed: “We can cite our achieve­ments in Sport, Lit­er­a­ture, Ed­u­ca­tion, and many oth­er fields, with our schol­ars oc­cu­py­ing ma­jor po­si­tions around the world.”

“We are al­so proud that af­ter serv­ing on the UN Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil at an ear­li­er time, this Sep­tem­ber, our coun­try will as­sume the Pres­i­den­cy of the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly," he added.