Portuguese lawmakers have rejected their president’s call to pay reparations.
Portugal will not pay reparations for atrocities committed during the transatlantic slave trade and the colonial era, the government said on Saturday.
The statement was in response to remarks made earlier in the week by Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who said his nation should “assume full responsibility” for the colonial-era and find a way to pay compensation.
Local media reported the statement as indicating there were no plans for a “process or program of specific actions” to provide restitution.
Portugal’s colonial era lasted more than five centuries. The decolonization of some African countries only occurred in 1974 after the ‘Carnation Revolution’ led to the fall of the authoritarian Estado Novo regime.
The territory of the Portuguese Empire in Africa included present-day Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and the island nations of Cape Verde, and Sao Tome and Principe.
The country is widely thought to have been the first European state to play a major role in the African slave trade. Between the 15th and the 19th centuries, almost six million Africans were forcibly transported across the Atlantic by Portuguese vessels and sold into servitude. Most went to Brazil, which was a Portuguese colony until 1822.
In September, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who is also a former Portuguese prime minister, urged former colonial states to consider financial reparations among measures to compensate for the enslavement of Africans. In a report, he said that up to 30 million people were violently uprooted from Africa over a span of more than 400 years.
“Under international human rights law, compensation for any economically assessable damage, as appropriate and proportional to the gravity of the violation and the circumstances of each case, may also constitute a form of reparations,” Guterres said.
Why not go back to the stone age, hey ??
I do not wish to sound cynical but what if Portugal paid lots of money to some African nations? What would they do with the money? I cannot help but assume that they would buy weapons which would lead to more instability in Africa. Perhaps that is the hidden agenda. I do not believe that the UN really cares about human rights.
If Portugal were to do something as compensation, then perhaps think of some resources or assistance (technical, logistic, creative etc.) that the African countries actually need rather than just sending large amounts of money.
Yes I agree, but pay they must and how do you calculate a fair compensation for 400 odd years of decimating a people – which is a nation’s most valuable resource. Spain, Portgual, USA, England, Australia are ALL responsible for the social unease, inequality and depravation of many countries around the world and they don’t give a hoot!
WRONG!
The social unease, inequality and depravation of many countries around the world is/was NOT caused by the people in said countries, but by the political corrupt elite there, who made deals with the synagogue of satan (look it up), i.e. the international finance cabal. If you want reparations, talk to THEM who own the world and don’t extort more tax from people who do work.
Reparations should only be paid to people who can prove that they were actually related to the slaves then they can pick up the reparations cheque in the country of origin and in the local currency.
Unfortunately those six million Africans do not exist no more so the money would only go to the wrong people. Portugal have acknowledged and that’s where it ends.
When the US stopped slavery, it also established a country in Africa to where all freed Africans could return. It is called Liberia. Look it up. See what has happened there. Read a little bit about indentured servitude in the early days of America. And in England as well. Get the other side of the story.
The Africans still in America are the ones who, as a free people, chose not to return to Africa.
Reparations is simply a money grabbing scam thought up by cultural marxists.
Do they have a time machine at the UN?
Yhe UN should stop interfering with people’s lives. They have only ever caused misery in Africa. They aren’t the solution they are the problem.