The Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA) in collaboration with the Graphic Communications Group Limited (GCGL) has launched the Emancipation Day celebrations and “Do Ghana” Travel Festival at the Accra Tourism Information Centre (ATIC) in Accra to kick-start activities lined up for this year’s programme.
The celebration, on the theme: “Our Heritage, Our Strength, with a sub-theme: ‘Leveraging Our Resilience; Black Lives Matter” is aimed at rekindling the frame of unity among black people everywhere and highlighting the interconnected nature of their struggles here on the mother continent and in Europe and America.
Ziblim Iddi Barri, Deputy Minister of Tourism Culture and Creative Arts said the event is designed to help Africans to reconnect their strengths and rededicate themselves to fully assume their own destiny in recognition of the lessons of history.
He said, “Emancipation Day should remind us once again that, the African family has been separated and that the different factions of the family both on the mother continent and in the Diaspora have suffered from this brutal and traumatic separation.”
“The persistent police brutalities and the criminalization of the judicial system against African American males and the recent killing of George Floyd, an African American, all point to an enduring, pervasive and bigoted world view fuelled by feelings of racial superiority among sections of the Caucasian population,” he added.
On his part, the Chief Executive Officer of GTA, Mr. Akwasi Agyeman, said “the celebration would open to see domestic arrivals performing insight from various industries and interact with each other in a meaningful way.”
Emancipation Day Celebration is a national and annual event observed to commemorate the resistance and liberation of African people in the Diaspora against enslavement and violation of their human rights.
The Emancipation Day Celebration which originated in the Caribbean has been celebrated since 1834 when chattel slavery was finally abolished in the Caribbean.
The event has been on Ghana’s tourism calendar of events since 1998. Ghana became the first African Country to re-affirm its status as the gateway to the homeland of Africans in the Diaspora.
Emancipation Day more consciously serves to create and develop a unique sense of unity, cooperation, and understanding amongst Africans the world over as well as all people of conscience. Emancipation is not only freedom to the enslaved, but also the enslaver.