MESSAGE BY HIS EXCELLENCY, PRESIDENT BHARRAT JAGDEO TO A SERVICE OF THANKSGIVING IN MEMORY OF THE CARIBBEAN VICTIMS OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTRE TRAGEDY, New York, October 28, 2001

We read in Holy Writ: “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven … a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.”

If ever there has been a time to weep and to mourn, a time to let our tears pour down like a tropical downpour giving our eyes no respite, it is now. For death came on September 11, 2001, on swift and sudden feet and savagely snatched from our company our countrymen and women – people from the Caribbean region of which we are a part.

The shock of it still has its impact of that numbness that we can scarcely take it all in. One thing we are certain about, however, is that they have gone to that bourne from which no traveler returns. And we are left to deal with the horror and the pain of it all.

We mourn their loss, which is our loss as well. In this regard, Guyana would want, publicly, to offer its sincerest and most heart-felt condolences to the families, relatives and friends, of those brothers and sisters of the CARICOM countries who lost their lives in the September 11th event. All Guyanese share your pain and sense of loss. Our lives are diminished by our compatriots’ death.

Future generations will look back on this period of our regional and hemispheric history, at the beginning of the third millennium and divide it into the pre-September 11 era and the post. They will do this as they consider matters of high international import in global politics and economics. We, for our part, today, can only be profoundly aware of a sense of deep loss as we remember those of our region who have perished in this watershed event.

Alas! The silver cord has snapped, the golden bowl is broken; the pitcher is smashed at the fountain; the wheel broken at the cistern and our brothers and sisters have gone to their eternal home. Somehow, we who survive them will have to integrate into our personal, national and regional lives, this tragedy, and patiently learn to come to terms with it.

What monument shall we erect to the memory of our loved ones? Lives committed to peace, tolerance and justice, and committed as well to the promotion of personal, national and regional well-being, that the things that make for death and destruction by violence will have no place in our region and world.

The people of Guyana mourn the loss of all of the victims of the September 11 tragedy.