Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa had called for Lisbon to find ways to compensate its former colonies, including canceling debt. The government says it has not initiated any process to that effect.
Lisbon is not planning to pay reparations for trans-Atlantic slavery and colonialism, Portugal’s government said on Saturday.
The statement comes in response to remarks by President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who said Portugal could find ways to compensate its former colonies.
Portugal said in a statement that it seeks to “deepen mutual relations, respect for historical truth and increasingly intense and close cooperation, based on reconciliation of brotherly peoples.”
It stressed that it had not launched any “process or program of specific actions” for paying reparations.
I don’t disagree. Yes, the effects of what happened are ongoing. You cannot expect to fix a joy of children by paying them money for their father’s loss, they won’t be ever the same. You can only make their living standards better. What’s done is done, no one can revert it. The whole issue is no different than this.
I wish the world was fair but I don’t think it will ever be. We cannot even fix our own countries, own municipals. We can only fix the future by taking an act today, we cannot fix the past.
The migration of tribes had shaped the world. Is there anything we can do about it? Industrial revolution had shaped the world, the world wars had shaped the world. Even though we have no intention to continue affecting the world negatively, there is no end to that. Sorry but we haven’t reached that serenity as homo sapiens. We must work for it but we won’t see it in our lives.
We should learn from our past, however we mustn’t try to fix it since we cannot, it’s plowing water.