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.
Canada looks disappointed.
Canada is an interesting demonstration, we’ve actually been going hard into funding reservation services and returning land that the government controls. I think the transparency of the government w.r.t. truth and reconciliation has also been helpful… but legitimate reparations? Canada can’t afford to make right the damage that’s been done - the scars we’ve left on some communities is difficult to fully grasp. So what’s the solution? It’s a fucking hard problem.
Not that difficult, you just move on. Use money from rich areas to build out poor areas and the elimination of inequality will solve the creation of it
The difficulty is getting people to sign onto eliminating inequality when they benefit from it