Portugal Denies Visa to Leader In Revolution

Major Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, invited to speak at Harvard by the Center for European Studies (CES) and also by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has been refused permission to leave Portugal by the General Chief of Staff, Pedro Cardosa.

Carvalho, a prominent figure in the Portugese Revolution of 1975, ran in the presidential election in 1976 as an independent and came in second, receiving 16.5 per cent of the vote. Carvalho was also influential in preparing liberation treaties for Mozambique and Angola.

Tomas Harlan, director of the film "Torre Bella," a documentary on the Portugese Revolution, who helped invite Carvalho to MIT, said yesterday Carvalho received a visa from the United States but was summoned later by Cardosa who told Carvalho that he did not want Carvalho creating publicity by visiting the United States. Cardosa added that if Carvalho should try to leave the country, he would be arrested immediately, Harlan reported.

Harlan said Carvalho received a written statement from Cardosa citing five reasons why the government would not grant permission for Carvalho to leave Portugal.

"They said that he could be needed as a military source, which is untrue, and that his absence could create disorders. The reasons were all presumptions, nothing concrete. Unreal and illegal," Harlan said.

Carvalho was scheduled to speak at a Portugese Film Festival at MIT on November 13 and 14 by MIT's Film Video Section.

Both the CES and MIT extended an invitation to Carvalho to speak in Cambridge after discovering that he was going to speak at several universities in the United States.

Suzanne D. Berger, professor of Political Science and research associate for the CES, said yesterday, "the Center was taking advantage of the fact that de Carvalho was going to be present in the United States."

On Tuesday, Harlan spoke with Carvalho who told him, "I am treated the same as a Soviet dissident and what is happening to me is absolutely illegal." Carvalho will continue to fight until Friday and hopes that everyone will help him, Harlan said.

Both the CES and the Film Video Section have sent telegrams to Cardosa and the President of the Portugese Republic, Ramallo Eamas, requesting that Carvalho be granted permission to come to the United States.

Luis de Sousa, Press Counsellor for the Portugese Embassy, said Tuesday that in 1975, Carvalho and others were accused of breaching military ethics and as a result he is legally bound.

"There is a military court case against him and even if this was not so, as a soldier, he must still get permission to leave the country," Sousa said.

Harlan said yesterday, "I personally think him (Carvalho) one of the greatest witnesses of change in the world. He is a source of information and testimony of two deciding years of liberation and democracy in Europe. He has freed the country of the same kind of arbitrary rules of dictatorship that he is a victim of now.