Today Guyana celebrates the 165th Anniversary of Emancipation, and Acting President Samuel Hinds in a message to mark the occasion has called for other Guyanese to join with those of African descent in celebrating the commemoration of the freedom of their foreparents.
"Let us condemn the flawed human reasoning that subjected a people to such treatment. Let us each reach over to each other; embrace each other with love and respect for the various roads by which we have come, as we work together to forge a common future, he urged.
The full text of the message reads :
"One hundred and sixty five years ago today, cries of freedom and sounds of jubilation reverberated throughout this land. The shouts of freedom signaled the end of a cruel and inhumane system that had nourished empires and enriched the planter classes.
Simultaneously however, the system of slavery had severely impoverished a whole race of people, demoralizing succeeding generations, and exacting prolonged and untold sufferings on the body and spirit of Africans. This system left deep wounds in African communities in many parts of the world, and the African continent itself.
Historians have endeavoured to record slave -experiences, explain their survival, qualify their contributions - but the measurement of the suffering of slaves is beyond any quantitative estimates. These sufferings were not only to body, but against their will, against their dignity, and a violation of their very humanity.
Doubtless, slavery and the sugar plantation occupy a central place in the legacy of African Guyanese, a legacy which the freed slaves immediately sought to surmount in their co-operative purchases of a number of sugar estates.
Today, as a multiethnic society we reflect on the sufferings of the ancestors of Guyanese of African origin and behold with admiration, the defiant rise of their descendants above historical circumstances, to play a central role in the building of a new society. Overcoming the legacy of slavery, they have excelled in every conceivable vocation, and claimed the summit in many endeavours.
As we celebrate in Guyanese multi-ethnic solidarity, the emancipation of our Guyanese ancestors from Africa, we are privileged to share in their sufferings
And the success of their descendants since.
Fellow Guyanese, our African fore-parents demand their freedom as a God-given human right that was non negotiable. For them, freedom was desired to take up the burdens and responsibilities that devolve upon free men; to play their part in humanizing a society, ravaged by animosity and seeped in conflict, and contradictions by love and forgiveness - not retaliation and revenge. They want their freedom to actualize their dreams, and to realize their visions.
Fellow Guyanese, as a nation we need to hear again, the bells of freedom, signaling the yet unfinished task to emancipate all our people from the deforming, crippling, and limiting effects and manifestations of human poverty. Today, all Guyanese share the vision of former slaves, of creating a new society, where want is banished, and where every willing man and woman has the opportunity for realizing his goals.
Today, the nation celebrates with our African brothers and sisters. We all appreciate being in a society that was constructed over centuries, by ancestors from all over the world. This diversity is our greatest asset which should serve as a spring board for national development and continued progress.