Former "Tarrafal" Inmates Meet After 35 Years

Thirty five years after its closure, the Tarrafal Concentration Camp, situated at Santiago Island (Cape Verde), hosted on the weekend old friends of Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau and Portugal, all former inmates who considered that they experienced the "worst moments of their lives" at that prison.
This time they meet, not as political prisoners, but with the noble mission truly recognising the camp as a cultural patrimony of humanity.
In four days of work, Angolans, Cape Verdeans, Guineans and Portuguese, who fought until 25 April 1974 against the Portuguese colonial regime, remembered histories, adventures and, above all, the daily life at Tarrafal Concentration Camp, which is surrounded by mountains and the Atlantic Ocean.
Angola, with a delegation led by the minister of Culture, Rosa Cruz e Silva, and comprising the deputy minister of Social Communication (media), Manuel Miguel de Carvalho, left Cape Verde pleased for having fulfilled its mission, and obtained the commitment of Cape Verdean authorities to turn the cells of Angolan inmates into cultural sites.
Speaking to the local press, Minister Rosa Cruz e Silva expressed the Angolan government's readiness to participate in the project that was presented by the Cape Verdeans, foreseeing to perpetuate the memory of all former political prisoners of the Portuguese colonial regime. (IRIN)