Home>Preliminary report on the inscription of the Tarrafal concentration camp (Cape Verde) as a World Heritage Site
26.05.2025
Preliminary report on the inscription of the Tarrafal concentration camp (Cape Verde) as a World Heritage Site
This report, written by Florence Bernault, University Professor, is intended for internal use within UNESCO (ICOMOS: International Council on Monuments and Sites). Entitled ‘Preliminary report on the inscription of the Tarrafal concentration camp (Cape Verde) on the World Heritage List’, it recommends the inscription of this site as a memory associated with recent conflicts, including torture, self-determination, resistance and colonial liberation movements, as well as exile, deportation and massive human rights violations.
The Tarrafal camp, set up in April 1936 in Cape Verde on the model of the Nazi concentration camps, mainly housed Portuguese anti-fascist prisoners, opponents of the Salazar regime in Portugal. Over a period of 20 years, the total number of these prisoners rose to 340, a considerable figure that shows the importance of Tarrafal in the military-dictatorial machinery of the Salazar dictatorship (1933-1975). The majority had never been legally tried or found guilty. Among them, 32 prisoners died. After an interruption between 1954 and 1961, the camp reopened under the name of ‘Chao Bom Labour Camp’, this time to house members of the liberation movements in Angola, Cape Verde and Guinea Bissau. From 1961 to 1974, Tarrafal housed 230 anti-colonialists, including 107 Angolans, 100 Bissau Guineans and 20 Cape Verdeans.
