MATTHEW CHIN

Re­porter

matthew.chin@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has called for a re­turn to the uni­ty he be­lieves the coun­try was found­ed up­on, as the na­tion cel­e­brates the Fes­ti­val of Lights—Di­vali.

Dr Row­ley made the re­marks at a Di­vali func­tion he host­ed at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s on Wednes­day. He said it was even more im­por­tant that T&T re­flects on the vic­to­ry of light over dark­ness now, giv­en the re­cent rise in glob­al con­flicts.

“We are the na­tion that start­ed from the very first day of our ex­is­tence to em­brace all. In our na­tion­al an­them, it says, ‘Every creed and race find an equal place’—that’s an en­ti­tle­ment with­in these bor­ders and it’s em­bod­ied in our Con­sti­tu­tion that cov­ers every one of us.

“Our strength is not in how much mon­ey we have, or how mighty our army is...our strength is ac­cept­ing that this na­tion is built of peo­ple of all races, creeds, colours, and class—that’s Trinidad and To­ba­go’s strength,” he said.

With­out ex­plic­it­ly stat­ing the coun­tries that have used geno­cide to ad­vance their so­ci­eties, the Prime Min­is­ter said this scourge has im­pact­ed the his­to­ry of the world.

The in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty has ac­cused Is­rael of geno­cide as con­tin­ues a full as­sault against Hamas. This has led to over 10,000 Pales­tini­ans re­port­ed­ly killed by Is­rael’s mil­i­tary fol­low­ing the start of the Oc­to­ber 7 war.

“For those of us who have been ex­posed to the texts of his­to­ry, not just our own his­to­ry, but the his­to­ry of the world, it is un­for­tu­nate that we’ll have to ac­cept that this thing called geno­cide has been part of hu­man his­to­ry in every part of the world,” Row­ley said.

“And it is not pe­cu­liar to any pe­ri­od of the world be­cause as re­cent as World War 2 in the 1940s there was geno­cide in Eu­rope and else­where in the world and we thought that that was the pass­ing of his­to­ry. We didn’t think that we’d be ex­pe­ri­enc­ing in our life­time,” he lament­ed.

De­spite the rec­ol­lec­tion of his­to­ry, Row­ley en­cour­aged cit­i­zens to re­flect on their mul­ti­cul­tur­al her­itage and up­hold­ing di­ver­si­ty as the pride and strength of Trinidad and To­ba­go.