As Trinidad and To­ba­go marks the 188th an­niver­sary of the abo­li­tion of slav­ery, Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les are urg­ing cit­i­zens to ho­n­our the sac­ri­fices and re­silience of en­slaved Africans while pro­tect­ing free­doms, pur­su­ing jus­tice and con­tin­u­ing the work of build­ing a so­ci­ety root­ed in equal­i­ty and op­por­tu­ni­ty.

In sep­a­rate African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day mes­sages, the na­tion’s lead­ers re­flect­ed on the hor­rors of the transat­lantic slave trade, the re­silience of African an­ces­tors and the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of present gen­er­a­tions to pro­tect the free­doms se­cured through their strug­gles.

They urged cit­i­zens to use the oc­ca­sion not on­ly for re­mem­brance, but as a call to ac­tion to build a more in­clu­sive so­ci­ety.

Pres­i­dent warns against prej­u­dice

Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo said African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day rep­re­sents a hard-won vic­to­ry achieved through gen­er­a­tions of re­sis­tance, sac­ri­fice and hope by en­slaved Africans who re­fused to ac­cept op­pres­sion as their des­tiny.

She not­ed that mil­lions were torn from their homes, stripped of their names, lan­guages, cul­tures and fam­i­lies, yet at­tempts to erase their iden­ti­ty and hu­man­i­ty ul­ti­mate­ly failed.

“Their strug­gle helped to bring one of his­to­ry’s dark­est chap­ters to an end,” the Pres­i­dent said, adding that Eman­ci­pa­tion af­firmed a uni­ver­sal truth that “no peo­ple can for­ev­er be de­prived of their dig­ni­ty.”

She stressed that while the ob­ser­vance is root­ed in the ex­pe­ri­ence of en­slaved Africans and their de­scen­dants, its mes­sage be­longs to all hu­man­i­ty.

“Slav­ery was an of­fence against the hu­man fam­i­ly, and Eman­ci­pa­tion was a vic­to­ry for the hu­man spir­it,” she said.

Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo al­so con­nect­ed the mean­ing of Eman­ci­pa­tion to present-day is­sues, in­clud­ing the bal­ance be­tween pub­lic safe­ty and in­di­vid­ual free­doms dur­ing pe­ri­ods of emer­gency mea­sures.

She said re­stric­tions on lib­er­ty must al­ways be ap­proached with “grav­i­ty and re­straint” and must nev­er weak­en the na­tion’s com­mit­ment to free­dom.

The Pres­i­dent al­so called for what she de­scribed as “in­tel­lec­tu­al eman­ci­pa­tion,” warn­ing against racism, prej­u­dice and the use of racial slurs.

She said true free­dom re­quires cit­i­zens to re­ject the be­lief that an­ces­try de­ter­mines worth, loy­al­ty or be­long­ing.

“To an­swer prej­u­dice with counter-prej­u­dice is not vin­di­ca­tion; it is sub­mis­sion to the same false­hood that race de­ter­mines char­ac­ter,” she said.

PM ho­n­ours an­ces­tors’ re­silience

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in her mes­sage, de­scribed the transat­lantic slave trade as “one of his­to­ry’s great­est crimes against hu­man­i­ty,” high­light­ing the mil­lions of African women, men and chil­dren who were forcibly re­moved from their home­land and sub­ject­ed to cru­el­ty.

How­ev­er, she said their spir­it and de­ter­mi­na­tion could not be de­stroyed.

“No chain could im­prison their spir­it, no in­jus­tice could ex­tin­guish their hu­man­i­ty, and no op­pres­sion could si­lence their de­ter­mi­na­tion to be free,” the Prime Min­is­ter said.

She cred­it­ed the con­tri­bu­tions of the de­scen­dants of en­slaved Africans to every as­pect of na­tion­al life, in­clud­ing mu­sic, lit­er­a­ture, cul­ture, ed­u­ca­tion, busi­ness, pub­lic ser­vice, sci­ence and sport.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so high­light­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go’s his­toric role as the first coun­try in the world to de­clare African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day a na­tion­al pub­lic hol­i­day in 1985.

She said that de­ci­sion ho­n­oured the sac­ri­fices of those who built the na­tion and en­sured their sto­ry would con­tin­ue to be re­mem­bered.

“The en­dur­ing les­son of Eman­ci­pa­tion is that free­dom is nev­er mere­ly in­her­it­ed. It must be cher­ished, pro­tect­ed and strength­ened by every gen­er­a­tion,” she said.

Beck­les urges pro­tec­tion of free­doms

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les called on cit­i­zens to ho­n­our the lega­cy of African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day by pro­tect­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al free­doms, pur­su­ing repara­to­ry jus­tice and re­ject­ing di­vi­sion.

In her mes­sage, Beck­les said the coun­try should re­mem­ber the courage and re­silience of en­slaved Africans while con­fronting the last­ing ef­fects of slav­ery and colo­nial­ism.

Ref­er­enc­ing this year’s theme, “Ig­nit­ing African Con­scious­ness: Dis­man­tling Colo­nial Lega­cies,” she said it chal­lenged cit­i­zens to ad­dress the en­dur­ing so­cial, eco­nom­ic and in­sti­tu­tion­al im­pacts of colo­nial­ism while build­ing on the achieve­ments of African an­ces­tors.

She al­so point­ed to what she de­scribed as grow­ing in­ter­na­tion­al mo­men­tum for repara­to­ry jus­tice, cit­ing a March 25, 2026 Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly res­o­lu­tion de­clar­ing the traf­fick­ing and en­slave­ment of Africans among his­to­ry’s gravest crimes against hu­man­i­ty. She al­so ac­knowl­edged the work of Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley, Pro­fes­sor Sir Hi­lary Beck­les and the Cari­com Repa­ra­tions Com­mis­sion.

Beck­les crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment for what she said was its fail­ure to recog­nise these in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ments, adding that they of­fered hope to the glob­al African di­as­po­ra.

She al­so used the oc­ca­sion to warn against any ero­sion of civ­il lib­er­ties.

“We must nev­er al­low a re­peat of any ver­sion of the plan­ta­tion sys­tem, which was sus­tained by laws that re­strict­ed move­ment, as­so­ci­a­tion and lib­er­ty, deny­ing peo­ple the pro­tec­tion of jus­tice and due process,” she said.

Beck­les said the coun­try was at a crit­i­cal point in its his­to­ry and urged cit­i­zens to en­sure that con­sti­tu­tion­al free­doms and due process were pro­tect­ed.