The Portuguese government has dismissed suggestions from the country’s president that it should “pay the costs” for slavery and other colonial-era crimes, saying it has no plans for reparations and will instead focus on deepening international cooperation “based on the reconciliation of brotherly peoples”.
Campaigners have long appealed to Portugal to address its legacy as the European country with the longest historical involvement in the slave trade. Between the 15th and 19th centuries, nearly 6 million Africans were kidnapped and forcibly transported across the Atlantic on Portuguese vessels.
Those who survived the voyage were enslaved and forced to toil on plantations in the Americas, mostly in Brazil, while Portugal and its institutions profited from their labour.
Last Tuesday, Portugal’s president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, said the country “takes full responsibility” for the wrongs of the past, and that the country’s crimes, including colonial massacres, had costs.
“We have to pay the costs,” he said. “Are there actions that were not punished and those responsible were not arrested? Are there goods that were looted and not returned? Let’s see how we can repair this.”
On Saturday, Rebelo de Sousa said reparations could be made by cancelling the debts of former colonies or introducing credit lines, financial packages or special cooperation programmes.
“We cannot put this under the carpet or in a drawer,” he said. “We have an obligation to pilot, to lead this process [of reparations].”
He said the country had to take “responsibility for the bad and good of what happened in the empire and draw consequences”.
Portugal’s new, centre-right coalition government said in a statement to the Portuguese news agency Lusa that it wanted to “deepen mutual relations, respect for historical truth and increasingly intense and close cooperation, based on the reconciliation of brotherly peoples”.
But it said it had “no process or programme of specific actions” for paying reparations, noting that this line had been followed by previous governments.
It called relations with former colonies “truly excellent” and cited cooperation in areas such as education, language, culture and health, in addition to financial, budgetary and economic cooperation.
The remarks came one year after Rebelo de Sousa said Portugal should apologise and “assume responsibility” for its role in the transatlantic slave trade – although he stopped short of providing concrete details or a full apology.
His latest comments elicited strong criticism from rightwing and far-right parties. Paulo Núncio, the leader of the parliamentary bench of the CDS-Partido Popular, the junior partner in the Democratic Alliance government coalition, said his party “does not need to revisit colonial legacies, reparation duties, which seem imported from outside”.
André Ventura, the leader of the far-right Chega party, went further, calling the president’s behaviour “a betrayal of the country”.
The UN human rights chief last week added his voice to the African and Caribbean countries calling for amends to be made over slavery and colonisation.
“On reparations, we must finally enter a new era,” the high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, said at a UN forum on people of African descent. “Governments must step up to show true leadership with genuine commitments to move swiftly from words to action that will adequately address the wrongs of the past.”
Portugal’s colonial era lasted more than five centuries, with Angola, Mozambique, Brazil, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe, East Timor and some territories in Asia subject to Portuguese rule.
Decolonisation of the African countries and the end of empire in Africa happened months after Portugal’s “Carnation Revolution” on 25 April 1974 toppled the longest fascist dictatorship in Europe and ushered in democracy.
Between the 15th and 19th centuries at least 12.5 million Africans were kidnapped into slavery and forcibly transported long distances by mainly European ships and merchants. European leaders for the most part have sought to steer clear of meaningfully addressing the call for reparations.
When the government of the Netherlands apologised for its role in the transatlantic slave trade in 2022, it said a €200m (£172m) fund to address this past would not be used to compensate descendants but instead spent on initiatives such as education and addressing the present-day impacts of slavery.
Reuters contributed to this report