THE HASTY GRANTING OF INDEPENDENCE

The memory of the abandonment of the overseas provinces still painfully at present. The drama of the "returnees" is a wound that the Third Republic failed to heal. It remains that justice is done: for the hundreds of thousands of innocent people whose lives were ruined and for those responsible for African tragedy in 1975.

The history textbooks treat the issue as closed, but the awkward questions are still relevant. What right MFA Portuguese military handed over Angola and Mozambique the allied parties of the (now defunct) Soviet Union? Why the people of the overseas provinces have never had the right to decide on their fate? The refugee crisis, aka "returnees" was inevitable?

The hasty granting of independence to the territories of Ultramar, one of the great sins of the present Republic, happened four some decades, stemmed the year 1975. At that time, arrived in Lisbon more than 400 000 refugees from Africa, whites, blacks and mestizos innocents who saw their lives ruined by a decolonization so-called "exemplary" but today prudently labeled "possible." In fact, an unnecessary tragedy that caused the largest ever repatriation movement in potuguese history.

The empire of King John II was abandoned in a hurry, and the little that was left of it lay close to the Discoveries in disjointed containers containing the meager possessions that the Portuguese still managed to save the civil war that was approaching rapidly from Angola. Just to evacuate all Portuguese Africans took 905 flights, and the newly nationalized TAP (Portuguese National Airline) had to give use to the imposing 747 recently acquired. The US and the USSR also contributed much to the misfortune that was to happen, as with aircraft to withdraw from overseas, mainly from Angola, citizens whose only "crime" was being born Portuguese. Also they were used 27 ships, which transported 100,000 people. Five hundred years later, modern boats made the route of the caravels, but in the opposite direction.

The economic costs of the 98% drop of the Portuguese territories were huge for the affected people. In 1973, the Gross National Product of Angola was 2.7 billion dollars, and the Mozambique 3.1 billion, according to World Bank data. A few years later, they were only a tiny fraction of that. For its part, Portugal has had growth rates of 10% per year to have received the first IMF (International Monetary Fund) in 1977.

The current Angolan regime, now trying to put up with the veneer of legitimacy of civilized states, states that the "settlers" were never expelled, but chose to leave the territory because of its "racism." But the real story is quite different when told by those who lived through the horrific events of 1975 - as Americo Cardoso Botelho, who left the poignantly portrayed in his book "Holocaust in Angola."

The Portuguese authority in the territory dominated by the Armed Forces Movement (MFA) and handled by the High Commissioner Rosa Coutinho, was already collapsing even before formal independence. Public executions, looting the Portuguese houses, widespread looting were common behaviors even before Portuguese flag be lowered for the last time. A situation that, with the exception of executions was not very different from that experienced in continental Portugal, grappling with the anarchy of PREC (Professorship of Renewable Energy Carriers).

In July 1974, more than a thousand prisoners escape from prison in Angola, many of them murderers, and the authorities decide to grant them an amnesty because the government no longer had the resources to capture again. In Luanda and Lourenco Marques today (Maputo) the homicide rate shoots. In full PREC, Vasco Gonçalves says a German television that the concerns of the Portuguese in Africa were the "a stubborn and selfish minority that refuses to recognize future prospects."

The newspapers were still almost all under the control of leftist forces and not reporting the situation impartially, turning the mainland Portuguese against their fellow citizens overseas. A British journalist, John Bruce Edlin, was even expelled from Mozambique for questioning the prevailing anarchy, but this time no one protested abroad.

The current Portuguese Republic would, of course, to forget that delivered all the Portuguese Empire to the Soviet communist bloc. But there is no way to forget how, at the crucial moment, racism left proved. At the time of forced separation, the whites were considered "Portuguese" and the blacks "something else" when previously all nationals under the same banner.

For centuries, Portugal assumed responsibility for the inhabitants of those territories, and many, in turn, served his country. In 1974, half of the Portuguese Army was composed of African soldiers, including the most decorated officer of our armed forces, Marcelino da Mata. The vast majority of these soldiers was abandoned to its fate. And your luck were mass executions, both their and their families.

African refugees have organized to demand compensation from the Portuguese State. This, in turn, shook the water from the coat claiming that the Third Republic did not yet exist at the time of colonization, and consequent decolonization of the territories. Even today, forty years later, the dispossessed Africa have not seen a cent. Many were unable to bring Africa or a small part of what they had built there and amassed with the sweat of his brow. The infamous Decree-Law 181/74 made the exchange transfer overseas shells for escudos an almost impossible operation.

The cause of all humanitarian catastrophe that lived were never tried. The advanced age of some means that no longer will be. Others lived and died in the greatest of comforts, sometimes even with pensions of the Portuguese State. Others are still in power in African territories.

The current Republic began thigh and thigh still survives. Want to forget the events of four decades ago to protect the "social peace". But worldwide the Angolan crisis is attracting the attention of developed countries to the tragedy of 1975, especially in view of the tragic effects it has had. Each year are published books that tell a divergent history of official history in relation to decolonization.

Books such as "Blood Diamonds: Corruption and Torture in Angola", the Angolan journalist Rafael Marques, "War and Peace: Portugal / Angola", of W. S. Van der Waals, "War of Africa, 1961-1974 - was lost the war?" Humberto Nuno de Oliveira and Ferreira Brandão two of the newspaper employees, "Holocaust in Angola," Americo Cardoso Botelho, "In the Name people - the massacre that Angola silenced, "Lara Pawson, or" the returnees Changed Portugal, "Fernando Dacosta, among many more, belie the" politically correct truth”.

The official silence continues, and schools still after 25 April 1975 and decolonization "exemplary" are counted students according to leftist playbook. In schools, children learn the three "D" of the MFA before they are taught the national anthem. But even with all the censorship and revisionism, fortunately there are those who still want to find out the truth.

The silence is becoming deafening.

Saisi