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Click here to see the summaryThe country’s president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, said at an event with foreign journalists on Tuesday that Portugal “takes full responsibility” for the wrongs of the past and that those crimes, including colonial massacres, had “costs”. The remarks came one year after Rebelo de Sousa said Portugal should apologise and “assume responsibility” for its role in the transatlantic slave trade, though he stopped short of providing any concrete details or a full apology. In both instances, the president’s remarks were made primarily to international audiences, said Paula Cardoso, the founder of the Afrolink online platform for Black professionals in Portugal. She agreed on the need for reparations, arguing that Portugal must pay the costs of “being the creator of the transatlantic slave trade, of a culture of dehumanisation of Black bodies”. The Portuguese president’s remarks come after the United Nations human rights chief 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 last week at a UN forum on people of African descent. — Saved 70% of original text.