PRIME Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has praised members of the Afro-Trinidadian community for their resilience and contribution to Trinidad and Tobago's development.

In her Emancipation Day message to the nation, Persad-Bissessar said, "This day honours the courage and resilience of millions of African ancestors who endured the brutal Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, a centuries-long atrocity that exiled over 11 million Africans to the Americas to be enslaved and exploited for the building of the New World."

She added, "Stripped of liberty and dignity, they were unimaginably brutalised and denied basic human rights."