President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa begins three-day visit to Cape Verde today

The Portuguese President, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, begins a visit to Cape Verde today to participate in the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the release of prisoners from the Tarrafal Concentration Camp, a symbol of the violence of the Portuguese colonial dictatorship.

The program, released by the Cape Verdean Presidency, starts at 5:00 pm (7:00 pm in Lisbon) with a visit to the Book Fair, in the capital, Praia, in which Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa will be received by his Cape Verdean counterpart, José Maria Neves.

Immediately afterwards, the two heads of state visit the exhibition “50 Years of April – Before and After”, at the National Historical Archive of Cape Verde.

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa ends the day with a welcome to the Portuguese community.

May 1st will be spent entirely in the former Tarrafal concentration camp, today the Resistance Museum, the central stage of the celebrations, in which the Guinean President, Umaro Sissoco Embaló, and a representative of the President of Angola will also participate, thus completing the range of four countries of origin of political prisoners.

The program includes the unveiling of a commemorative plaque, a special session with heads of state and a conference on the Tarrafal field by historian Victor Barros.

In the afternoon, the presidents take a guided tour of the countryside and the day’s celebrations end with a concert with Mário Lúcio (Cape Verde), Teresa Salgueiro (Portugal), Paulo Flores (Angola) and Karyna Gomes (Guinea Bissau), with free entry .

The Portuguese President’s program for Thursday, in Cape Verde, is still being finalized.

A total of 36 people were killed by the Portuguese colonial dictatorship in the Tarrafal concentration camp.

The majority, 32 dead, were Portuguese who challenged the fascist regime, imprisoned in the first phase of the camp, between 1936 and 1956.

The camp reopened in 1962 under the name Camp de Trabalho de Chão Bom, intended to incarcerate anti-colonialists from Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde – when two Angolans and two Guineans died.

In total, more than 500 people were imprisoned in the “slow death camp”.