In the debate, Monday on CNN, with Pacheco Pereira, André Ventura said that “system” politicians do not admit the political crimes of the post-25th of April and cited conclusions from the Report of the Investigating Committee of violence against prisoners subject to military authorities”, the so-called “Report of Abuses” – but in doing so he contradicted himself.
This report, published in July 1976, was prepared upon recommendation by the Council of the Revolution in the aftermath of November 25, 1975. This fact was omitted by Ventura.
The document was a political instrument of the victors of this last coup and much of what is said there is not properly supported, nor does it include the defense of the people and institutions accused of being perpetrators of the said abuses. It is partial and doubtful, but it will undoubtedly also contain truths.
This is not the central point of this discussion. The point is that, contrary to Ventura’s argument, the democratic regime that 25 de Abril created in 1974 was already openly discussing, at an official level and less than two years later, the abuses that the regime itself had committed, something that during 48 years of Portuguese fascism never happened – moreover, the said report is available, for everyone, on the website of the Presidency of the Republic, it is not hidden.
Therefore, when André Ventura states that in 50 years of democracy the dominant political class did not admit the existence of Human Rights abuses after the 25th of April, he is lying and contradicts himself when he presents as evidence a report that was even prepared by some actors on the 25th of April 1974, such as, for example, the journalist Francisco Sousa Tavares.
Another manipulation by André Ventura is to say that Salazar and Caetano never signed arrest orders, which would only have happened after the 25th of April.
Neither Salazar nor Caetano needed to write orders for political arrests because they gave them verbally. For example, Silva Pais, who was director of PIDE from 1962, appears mentioned 119 times in the agendas of Salazar’s individual hearings, who left power six years later. Gives almost 20 times a year.
Ventura complained that there were three thousand political prisoners following the 25th of April and that 30 thousand people fled the country.
In 1974, according to the PIDE/DGS Extinction Commission, there were 3000 political police agents and more than 20 thousand informants (the so-called “snitches”). If we add to this several military personnel, police officers, members of the Portuguese Legion, many other authorities such as civil governors, ministers, secretaries of state, senior civil servants, members of the censorship commissions, judges of the plenary courts and thousands of other people who actively participated, even indirectly, in the structures of political repression of the fascist regime, we will have to ask: “Could a revolution that brings down a repressive regime keep the people who exercised that repression free?”
In fact, it would have been expected that there would be more arrests and more escapes, but, just 17 months later, as André Ventura ended up saying, almost everyone was free or starting to return. And this demonstrates the tolerance of April 25th.
More than 30 thousand resisters and patriots did not have this luck during fascism. Álvaro Cunhal, for example, spent more than 11 years in prison and was only freed because he fled the Fort of Peniche. He spent 14 years outside his country… until April 25th.
How can you compare one thing to another?!
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