Dores Ribeiro

Photographers for Ukraine
Upon learning of the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation, I could not remain indifferent.
So we decided at the Incubator Gallery to challenge our photographers and others who would join to participate in an auction and donate 85% of the proceeds to UNICEF.
This  Ukraine invasion by the Russian Federation reminded me of other wars in Afghanistan, Yemen and others to which I did not pay enough attention, perhaps because they are distant countriesof which I know little or nothing about their culture, with the exception of Afghanistan, which I know a or another poet. Did I do wrong.
But with the feeling that it would be a brutal war, the images came to confirm and knowing, now, how Ukrainian mothers arrived in Portugal with their children, exhausted, in need of urgent medical treatment, I could not stand still.
The European Union was distracted by the Russian Federation and the result is this, the attempt to reconquer the former Soviet Union, that is, to impose autarky to the detriment of democracy,
imposing puppet governments in the usurped lands.
It is a war we all have to fight. I was born after the war and lived during the fascist dictatorship of Salazar and I know the political and social repression that existed.
A few days ago I participated the debate at the Rectory of the Lisbon University  on the academic struggle of 1962 and I don't want to go back to those times, democracy is built on a daily basis.