Guyana’s Honorary Consul in Barbados, Norman Faria told the gathering on Sunday at the Remembrance ceremony at the Cubana Monument in Barbados: “We must look ahead.”

The occasion was the 27th anniversary of the terrorist destruction of the Cubana Airlines plane off the coast of Barbados, killing all 73 people on board, including 11 Guyanese, the majority of whom were travelling to Cuba to study medicine.

In brief remarks on behalf of the Guyana government, the Honorary Consul noted that other Guyanese have since taken up the opportunity to study in Cuba and 120 are there now.

“In 2001, an agreement was signed with the government of President Bharrat Jagdeo and Cuban President Dr Fidel Castro for the granting of 350 scholarships for Guyanese to study at Cuban universities,” Faria noted, adding that all of this bodes well for the future.

Among the casualties when the Cubana Airlines plane went down in October 1976 were 57 Cubans and five citizens of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

Faria said all peace-loving and democratic-minded people worldwide condemned the evil act of the airline bombing and recalled his sadness when he was in Cuba in 1981 and visited The Martyrs of Barbados School which was set up to honour those who died. “But it was also a time of hope and brightness because the Cubans have, among other ways, honoured the sacrifice of those who perished by turning the school into a top notch educational sports academy, one of several in the island,” the Honorary Consul noted. He said further that the main victims of such terror and crime are mainly working people as in the September 2001 attacks in the US. “It will not bring progress and must be condemned,” Faria asserted. He also urged that efforts be redoubled to deepen democratic governance, peace and economic development everywhere and called for the condemnation of terrorism in all its forms since that works against those noble aims.