Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has reaf­firmed Trinidad and To­ba­go’s com­mit­ment to con­fronting ter­ror­ism in all its forms in her 9/11 mes­sage mark­ing the 24th an­niver­sary of the at­tacks in the Unit­ed States.

In her mes­sage, Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­mem­bered the near­ly 3,000 vic­tims of the at­tacks, in­clud­ing four­teen Trin­bag­o­ni­ans who went to work at the World Trade Cen­ter and nev­er re­turned home.

“Their sac­ri­fice is a painful re­minder that ter­ror­ism recog­nis­es no bor­ders, no creed, and no hu­man­i­ty,” she said, of­fer­ing prayers to the fam­i­lies of the vic­tims and reaf­firm­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple and Gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar high­light­ed her Gov­ern­ment’s past and on­go­ing ef­forts to com­bat ter­ror­ism, re­call­ing that in 2014, dur­ing her first tenure as Prime Min­is­ter, Trinidad and To­ba­go co-spon­sored a Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil res­o­lu­tion against for­eign ter­ror­ist fight­ers, strength­en­ing glob­al mea­sures to dis­man­tle ter­ror net­works.

“To­day, as Prime Min­is­ter once more, I reaf­firm my Gov­ern­ment’s re­solve to con­front this men­ace in all its evolv­ing forms,” she said.

She warned that ter­ror­ism in the re­gion now of­ten ap­pears through nar­co-traf­fick­ing, arms smug­gling, and transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime, which she de­scribed as mod­ern weapons of ter­ror.

“These scourges de­stroy lives, desta­bilise so­ci­eties, and rob our chil­dren of their fu­ture,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, pledg­ing to work close­ly with the Unit­ed States and oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al and re­gion­al part­ners to de­feat such threats.

“We will re­main vig­i­lant and re­silient, de­fend­ing our peo­ple and our val­ues with­out fear or hes­i­ta­tion,” she added.

She prayed for the vic­tims of Sep­tem­ber 11 and called for con­tin­ued glob­al sol­i­dar­i­ty against ter­ror­ism.