Former Prime Minister and former Mayor of Georgetown Hamilton Green has delivered a searing Emancipation Day message, warning that nearly 188 years after slavery was abolished in Guyana, Afro-Guyanese are confronting what he describes as a “subtle form of re-enslavement” through economic exclusion, political marginalisation and the erosion of historical consciousness.

In a letter published by Village Voice News on July 29, Green urged descendants of enslaved Africans to view Emancipation Day—not merely as a cultural celebration, but as a renewed call to resist injustice, reclaim their dignity and fight for equal participation in a country transformed by oil wealth but, he argues, still marked by deep inequalities.

“As we observe the official end of the brutality of slavery in Guyana, there are ominous signs that the descendants of manumitted Africans face the real prospect of a subtle form of re-enslavement,” Green wrote.