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.