Fernando Rosas

Fernando José Mendes Rosas is a Portuguese historian and politician.

Rosas was born on April 18, 1946. He studied at Pedro Nunes high school, and in 1961, he joined the school's Portuguese Communist Party organization, a party for which he was later a .

He entered University of Lisbon's Faculty of Law where he remained an active militant. He was arrested in the repressive wave of January, 1965, while he was directing the student association of his Faculty. The Estado Novo arrested dozens of activists from the main board of student resistance. He was tried and convicted in 1965. He served one year and three months at a correctional facility. As he left this facility he dedicated himself to supporting activities for arrested politicians.

The events of May 1968, and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, in August of the same year, led him to opt for the abandonment of the Communist Party. He participated in Portugal's first public protest against the Vietnam War, supported by sectors that were linked to the Students' Democratic Left-Wing, organization which he helped found in late 1968. It was as a politician responsible for this party that he organized the 1969 protests in Lisbon. He also participated in the second protest (this time centred on Coimbra).

In August 1971, he was arrested for the second time and taken to the headquarters of the PIDE political police. He was submitted to sleep torture for several days and then the regime's courts convicted him to 14 months at a correctional facility.

Upon his release, he returned to anti-fascist activism. In March 1973, he actively supported the campaign for the accusation of the murder of African Nationalist Politician Amílcar Cabral. After a renewed attempt by the PIDE to imprison him, he escaped and went "underground" until the Carnation Revolution on April 25, 1974.

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