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Sunday, July 6, 2025

Emancipation Day gets a name change

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443 days ago
20240419
FILE: Ashanti King Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, of Ghana, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley and his wife Sharon during the 2023 Emancipation Day procession from Independence Square to the Queen’s Park Savannah, Port-of-Spain.

FILE: Ashanti King Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, of Ghana, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley and his wife Sharon during the 2023 Emancipation Day procession from Independence Square to the Queen’s Park Savannah, Port-of-Spain.

EDISON BOODOOSINGH

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced yes­ter­day that Cab­i­net has ap­proved a change of name for the Eman­ci­pa­tion hol­i­day. 

This Au­gust 1st, the new name will be African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day. 

He made the an­nounce­ment at the post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at White­hall.

Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley said, “The time has come for us to make it quite clear what eman­ci­pa­tion means; and who is be­ing eman­ci­pat­ed.”

He said he no­ticed in­ter­na­tion­al­ly that oth­ers were, “at­tempt­ing to climb on­to the Eman­ci­pa­tion band­wag­on and at­tempt­ing to add ap­pendages to it”.

Row­ley said since Trinidad and To­ba­go had led the world in mak­ing Eman­ci­pa­tion Day a hol­i­day, he want­ed to make it clear that “eman­ci­pa­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go is as a re­sult of the eman­ci­pa­tion of slaves”.

“There’s no com­par­i­son be­tween slav­ery and any oth­er form of hu­man in­dig­na­tion,” Row­ley said.

He added, “We are de­scen­dants of slaves. We have a du­ty to pre­serve our his­to­ry, or lega­cy and make our claim with­out apolo­gies to any­one.”


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