The following is a lightly edited version of Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness’s Emancipation Day address.

My fellow Jamaicans, today holds profound meaning and solemn pride. It is a moment of reverence, remembrance, reflection, and reaffirmation. A day when we pause to honour the struggle, suffering, and sacrifice of our ancestors, while also drawing inspiration from their strength to shape our path forward.

It is also a day when we take stock of where we have come from and commit never to do anything that could compromise our freedom or impact our trajectory towards the better Jamaica of which our ancestors dreamed. A Jamaica where we have complete financial and economic freedom, freedom from crime and violence, freedom from unemployment, and freedom from any restraint that could prevent us from realising our individual and collective potential as a nation.

Emancipation Day holds significance not only for Jamaica, but for the entire world. The abolition of slavery was not merely a historical event, it was a seismic moral awakening. It marked a decisive turning point when an institution, once regarded as lawful, even natural, was confronted and condemned as a crime against humanity.

The formal end of slavery in the British Empire in 1834, followed by full freedom in 1838, ignited a wave of abolition across the globe over the remainder of the 19th century. It signalled that no system, no matter how entrenched or profitable, could forever deny the dignity of human beings. The struggle for Emancipation was a chapter in a global awakening of conscience, and Jamaica stood at the forefront of that fight.

But beyond its global relevance, Emancipation Day is deeply personal for us as a people. For Jamaicans, it is not an abstract milestone, it is the hard-won triumph of our ancestors who endured the unspeakable horrors of slavery on plantations, in pens, and under the lash. It is the declaration that those who were once regarded as property were, and had always been, fully human, fully worthy, and fully free.

With freedom came the right of our predecessors to determine their own future. And even though that right came with obstacles, the freed men and women persevered. They established free villages, built churches and schools, and cultivated a culture of resilience that would give birth to our present.

In remembrance of those who came before, each generation must grapple with the questions: What are we doing with the freedom for which they struggled? How are we honouring the blood, sweat, and sacrifice that made our liberty possible?

To truly honour our forebears, we must show through our conduct, our choices, our institutions, and our achievements that we are a great people capable of achieving great things. Every time we demonstrate competent self-government, every time we hold fair elections, uphold the rule of law, educate our children, care for our elders, invest in our infrastructure, and uplift the vulnerable, we are demonstrating our capacity, our strength, and our resilience.

Emancipation was the beginning of a responsibility, a duty to build a society founded on order, dignity, and justice. That duty is ours still. On this Emancipation Day, let us renew our commitment to fulfilling it — not as victims of history but as authors of our own future.

May Emancipation Day inspire in each of us a deeper resolve to protect our freedom, uplift our people, and honour our ancestors who made our liberty possible. Let us carry the torch of freedom with purpose and pride and resolve to fulfil the great destiny won for us by the blood and courage of our ancestors.

May God bless you, and may God bless Jamaica, land we love.

Andrew Holness.