In a television debate organized by the UN News on the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution, and attended by the permanent ambassadors to the UN of Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Portugal and East Timor, António Guterres argued that "there would not have been April 25 without the struggle of the African liberation movements". "First of all, I believe that it is necessary to do justice and I am very pleased to be here with the representatives of the Portuguese-speaking countries and, in particular, of the African countries, because there is often this idea that the 25th of April was a Portuguese revolution and that as a result of that Portuguese revolution, which created or recreated democracy in Portugal, decolonization was possible", he said. "The truth is that there would not have been April 25 without the struggle of the African liberation movements," reinforced the former Portuguese prime minister, at the UN headquarters in New York, insisting that there is a very direct link between the struggle for democracy in Portugal that leads to April 25, and the struggle of the African liberation moments that lead to their independence. The leader of the United Nations rejected that a cause-and-effect relationship is at stake, but rather "a deep interpenetration" of the process that took place in Portugal in the fight against the dictatorship and the process that took place in African countries - at the time Portuguese colonies - of the liberation movements against Portuguese colonialism. Highlighting the "profound sense of liberation" experienced on April 25, 1974, António Guterres drew a parallel with the present day, stressing that people who live in Portugal today do not know what it is like to live in a country without freedom. In pre-revolution Portugal, Guterres recalled, there was no freedom of organization, no freedom of unions, no freedom of association, no freedom of expression, there was censorship, artistic expression was conditioned and there was strong repression of all those who dared to criticize the dictatorship. The level of repression was even "much more violent" in the Portuguese colonies than in Portugal, he said. "We do not value the extraordinary struggle of the African liberation movements and the extraordinary courage of those who in Portugal - first the military and then the people who joined massively in the streets - freed us from the dictatorship and freed us from colonial oppression", partly "because the new generations have not had that experience of what it is like to live under a dictatorial regime and under an oppressive regime of other peoples", he said. At the event promoted by UN News, Guterres, who was born in Portugal during the dictatorship of António de Oliveira Salazar, shared memories of the events that marked the Carnation Revolution, but also its relevance in global terms. The UN Secretary-General criticized that this revolution did not happen decades earlier, highlighting the legacy of colonialism and the tragic consequences for the colonized countries. "Unfortunately, Portugal came very late. (...) The idea that it was possible to maintain a colonial empire, in the 20th century, as Salazar thought, was not only deeply unacceptable from a political and moral point of view, but it was an absurd idea, because it was obvious that a poor, small country like Portugal did not have the conditions to do so", he argued. The former prime minister also stressed that there is no notion of what the suffering of the Portuguese was, indicating that "more than a million Portuguese in the 1960s" left the country, many of them because they did not want to do military service or because Portugal was not developing, nor creating the necessary conditions and opportunities, for them to remain. "Of course, we are on the right side of history by liberating a country from dictatorship, and we are on the right side of history by restoring justice in international relations, after a colonial past that is unacceptable", he said. Guterres left a message of "great hope" for the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries (CPLP), in which he sees "a symbol of peace" and a "deep sense of fraternity that, unfortunately, is lacking in the world", hoping that the bloc can play a decisive role in "restoring the confidence that is lost in the world". Read Also: Guterres condemns "any act of retaliation" after Israel's attack (Portuguese version)