Reparations to former colonies absent from April 25th ceremony with PALOP presidents

In the morning, he was attacked by the right and accused by Chega of “treason” to the country. At the end of the afternoon, a moment of enormous symbolism: at the Centro Cultural de Belém (CCB), Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa – son of the last overseas minister of the previous regime – received the five presidents of the Portuguese-speaking African Countries (PALOP) and the President of Timor-Leste. The Portuguese Head of State, however, made an innocuous, peaceful and brief speech, lasting less than four minutes, when two days earlier, he had defended restitution and compensation to former Portuguese colonies at a dinner with foreign journalists. Now, given the sensitivity of the topic, the President of the Republic has completely ignored the matter before their counterparts from Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Timor-Leste.

The subject was also not part of any of the speeches by African officials, even after the Brazilian Minister of Racial Equality, Anielle Franco, asked for “concrete actions” this Wednesday, upon hearing Marcelo’s “forceful” statements. The Presidents of the PALOP ignored the issue of compensation for slavery or the restitution of works of art to their countries, which, in fact, had been, in 2019, the issue that triggered the controversy between Joacine Katar Moreira (ex-Livre) and André Ventura who ordered her to return to Guinea-Bissau.

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