The President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, recalled, this Wednesday, "the hundreds and hundreds" of political prisoners who "suffered and died" at the hands of a "Portuguese dictatorship" that ended up spreading and reaching "the Angolan, Guinean, Cape Verdean brothers", on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the Tarrafal Camp, in Cape Verde.

"This is, in fact, a moment that calls us to the past, to the present and to the future. To the past, paying tribute to the hundreds and hundreds of political prisoners; in a first phase, Portuguese, in a second phase, Angolans, Guineans, Cape Verdeans who here suffered and here died at the hands of what began as a Portuguese dictatorship for the Portuguese and, later, was an imperial and colonial dictatorship that also repressed the Angolan, Guinean, Cape Verdean brothers", said the Head of State.

Marcelo pointed out that, "in a model inspired by the most bloody European dictatorships of those 1930s", 340 Portuguese since 1936 were banished "far from their lands, far from their families, to go slowly dying in the memory of the ideals they embraced, in the memory of their struggles, in the memory of their loved ones".

"And failing at that. Because even when the leader of one of the fundamental parties in the resistance to the dictatorship died here, the ideal for which he fought did not die. And the same can be said of what was experienced in suffering, and in death, by many who, from 1961 onwards, were our brothers in language, our brothers in the fight for freedom, for democracy. Our brothers in the fight against the colonial empire resisted here, and their causes resisted here", he said.

The official thus pointed out that there "we know what oppression is", where there are "visible signs of what bloody repression is", which "we do not want to be the present and we do not want to be the future".

"We no longer want to see repeated what was experienced here for almost 40 years and experienced here, perhaps in the most brutal way, than that with which it was experienced in Portugal, in Angola, in Guinea-Bissau and in other brother states. And that is why this Museum of Resistance, so called since 2000, is like all museums a living museum, which testifies to what was the suffering and death", he stressed.

And he reiterated: "The Portuguese people fully assume the rejection of this past."

It should be recalled that a total of 36 people died in the camp, most of them Portuguese, who opposed the fascist regime and who had been imprisoned in the first phase of the camp, between 1936 and 1956.

The prison reopened in 1962 with the name of Campo de Trabalho de Chão Bom, intended to incarcerate anti-colonialists from Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, when two Angolans and two Guineans died.

The liberation of those who opposed the Estado Novo took place a few days after the fascist regime was overthrown with the revolution of April 25, 1974 in Portugal.

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