Asantehene's speech at the 2023 Emancipation Day Celebration in Trinidad and Tobago

The Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, has been in Trinidad and Tobago for the country's Emancipation Day Celebration since Sunday, July 30, 2023.

His Majesty Otumfuo is the special guest of honour for the 2023 Emancipation Day celebration, which is celebrated every August 1 to commemorate the final abolition of Chattel Slavery in the British colonies on August 1, 1834.

Delivering a speech at an event to make the celebration at Port of Spain, the capital town of Trinidad and Tobago, on Tuesday, August 1, 2023, the Asantehene commended Trinidadians and Tobagonians for being the first people to celebrate liberation from colonialism.

“Trinidad and Tobago deserves all the honour as the first nation to commemorate Emancipation Day as a national holiday.

“And particularly for giving it the international dimension it has assumed,” he said.

The Asantehene also commended all the brave heroes who help save Africa from slavery and colonialism.

“And yes, we also salute the heroes in the post-emancipation epoch: Marcus Garvey, Dr WB Dubois; Dr Martin Luther King; the radical Trinidadian intellect, George Padmore; CE Ed James, whose intellectual and philosophical ideas fanned the flames of Pan Africanism and inspired leaders like Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta and Nelson Mandela to pursue the political emancipation of the continent of Africa from the yoke of colonialism,” he said.

The overlord of the Ashanti Kingdom also said that courageous resistance has brought Ghana and Trinidad and Tobago to a happy place, where the two countries can join hands and think together, plan and pull their resources together to improve the likelihood of their citizens.

Watch excerpts of Otumfuo’s speech in the video below:

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