THE Jamaica National Bicentenary Committee will on Sunday stage an ancestral funeral rites service at the Kingston Harbour, for the more than one million slaves who died on the island, in commemoration of the

200th anniversary of the parliamentary abolition of Transatlantic Trade in Africans to Jamaica.

The ceremony, which will see the participation of

persons from a wide cross section of religious faith,

will have all the rituals of a funeral service but will be performed according to the different faiths.

Sydney Bartley, principal director of entertainment and culture in the Ministry of Tourism and a member of the committee for the promotion of national religious services, said that throughout the service the names of at least 1,000 of these ancestors will be read out.

“The names will be placed on a long scroll and as they are read out we expect various members of the student council to be holding that scroll in a very solemn way,” Bartley told the Observer.

He said prayers and text will be read from various faiths, including Christians, Rastafarians, Jews, Revivalists and Muslims, and that a chief from Ghana will be brought in to perform African rituals.

“It is not right to die and not get a proper burial and so we are honouring them by having a funeral service in their honour and that will be done in an interfaith

manner, with the various faiths sharing throughout the ceremony,” said Bartley.

The event, he said, will be a solemn one and not something which is dramatised.

“Each faith is going out there to have a funeral

service like any they would have in their church,” he said.

Bartley said the idea to have the service was birthed because of the dishonourable way the slaves were treated even in death.

“We have always been concerned about what it must have been like to jump in the sea or have people throw you over or to die on a plantation and someone take a little hole in and throw you in it,” he said.

Reverend Gary Harriot, general secretary of the Council of Churches, said the Christian church recognises the importance of closure when a loved one dies. “This for us is a very important gesture to help people to come to a sense of closure and to remember and celebrate the lives of our ancestors,” he said.

And for those Christians who may question the church’s decision to participate in such rituals, Reverend Harriot said he knows some Christians will have a challenge . “But God is one and we as human beings struggle to find ways of expressing our understanding of that one God and we don’t have to be the same to be united in purpose,” he said.

Sunday’s ceremony will also see performances from the Carifolk Singers, National Dance Theatre Company, Port Morant Kumina and the Tivoli Gardens dancers.

The Caricom Secretariat has issued an advisory asking all gathering across the region to observe a minute of silence on Sunday at 11:00 am Jamaica time (12:00 Eastern Caribbean) to commemorate the exact

anniversary of the parliamentary abolition of the Transatlantic slave trade.