THE SILENCE IS BECOMING DEAFENING

The memory of the abandonment of the overseas provinces remains painfully present. The drama of the "returnees" is a wound that the Portuguese Third Republic could not heal. There is still justice to be done: for the hundreds of thousands of innocent people whose lives have been ruined and for those responsible for the African tragedy of 1975.

History manuals treat the topic as closed, but annoying questions remain pertinent. By what right did the Portuguese military of the MFA hand over Angola and Mozambique to allied parties of the (now extinct) Soviet Union? Why have the peoples of the overseas provinces never had the right to decide on their fate? Was the refugee crisis, commonly referred to as "returnees", inevitable?

The hasty grant of independence to the Overseas Territories, one of the great sins of the present Republic, happened four decades ago certain, was the year 1975. At that time, more than 400 thousand refugees from Africa, white, black and innocent mestizos who saw their lives ruined by a decolonization then called "exemplary" but now prudently labeled "possible." In fact, an unnecessary tragedy that has provoked the largest repatriation movement ever in our history.

The empire of King John II was hurriedly abandoned, and what remained of it lay close to the Monument to the Discoveries, in unconjugated containers containing the meager possessions which the Portuguese still managed to save from the civil war approaching swiftly from Angola. Only 905 flights were needed to evacuate all Portuguese from Africa, and the newly nationalized TAP had to use even the newly acquired Boeing 747s. The United States and the USSR also contributed, both to the disgrace that was taking place, and to planes to withdraw from the Overseas, especially from Angola, citizens whose only "crime" was that they were born Portuguese. Also 27 ships were used, which carried 100 thousand people. Five hundred years later, modern ships made the route of the caravels, but in the opposite direction.

The economic costs of abandoning 98% of the Portuguese territories were enormous for the affected peoples. In 1973, Angola's Gross National Product was US $ 2.7 billion and Mozambique's US $ 3.1 billion, according to the World Bank. A few years later, they were only a tiny fraction of that value. For its part, Portugal went from having growth rates of 10% a year, to having to receive the IMF for the first time in 1977.

Terror and left-wing racism

The current Angolan regime, now trying to clothe itself with the veneer of legitimacy of civilized states, claims that the "settlers" were never expelled, they only chose to leave the territory because of their "racism." But the true story is quite different, when told by those who lived the horrible events of 1975 - like Américo Cardoso Botelho, who left them poignantly portrayed in his book "Holocaust in Angola."

The Portuguese authority in the territory, dominated by the Armed Forces Movement (MFA) and manipulated by the High Commissioner Rosa Coutinho, was already in collapse even before formal independence. Public executions, looting of Portuguese houses, generalized plunder were common behaviors even before our flag was last lowered. A situation which, with the exception of executions, was not very different from that experienced in mainland Portugal, in the face of the anarchy of PREC.

In July 1974 more than 1,000 inmates fled the prison in Angola, many of them homicides, and the authorities decided to grant them an amnesty because the government no longer had the resources to capture them again. In Luanda and Lourenço Marques the homicide rate is firing. In the midst of PREC, Vasco Gonçalves told German television that the anxieties of the Portuguese in Africa were "from a stubborn and selfish minority who refuse to acknowledge the prospects for the future."

The newspapers were still mostly under the control of the leftist forces and did not report the situation in an indifferent manner, turning the Continental Portuguese against their overseas compatriots. A British journalist, John Bruce Edlin, was even expelled from Mozambique for questioning the ruling anarchy, but this time no one protested abroad.

The present Portuguese Republic would like, of course, to forget that it delivered the entire Portuguese Empire to the Soviet communist bloc. But there is no way to forget how at the crucial moment, the racism of the left has been revealed. At the time of forced separation, whites were considered "Portuguese" and blacks "something else" when they were previously all national citizens under the same flag.

For centuries, Portugal assumed responsibility for the inhabitants of those territories, and many, in return, served their homeland. In 1974, half of the Portuguese Army consisted of African soldiers, including the most decorated officer of our Armed Forces, Marcelino da Mata. The vast majority of these soldiers were left to their fate. And their lot was mass executions, both of them and their families.

Silence

Refugees from Africa organized to demand compensation from the Portuguese state. This, in turn, shook the water of the capote alleging 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 plundered Africans did not see a cent. Many did not manage to bring from Africa a small part of what they had built there and filled with the sweat of their faces. The infamous decree-law 181/74 made the exchange transfer of overseas escudos to Portuguese shields an almost impossible operation.

The perpetrators of all the humanitarian catastrophe that has been experienced have never been tried. The high age of some means that they will no longer be. Others lived and died in the greatest of comforts, sometimes even with pensions of the Portuguese State. Still others are in power in the African territories.

The present Republic began thigh, and thigh still survives. It wants to forget the events of four decades ago to safeguard "social peace". But throughout the world the Angolan crisis is catching the attention of the developed countries to the tragedy of 1975, especially considering the tragic effects that it had. Every year books are published that tell a divergent history of official history in relation to decolonization.

Books like "Blood Diamonds: Corruption and Torture in Angola", by the Angolan journalist Rafael Marques, "War and Peace: Portugal / Angola", by W.S. Van der Waals, "War of Africa, 1961-1974 - Was the War Lost?" By Humberto Nuno de Oliveira and Brandão Ferreira (contributors of the newspaper O Diabo), "Holocaust in Angola" by Américo Cardoso Botelho, "In the Name of People - The massacre that Angola silenced ", by Lara Pawson, or" The Returned Changed Portugal ", by Fernando da Costa, among many others, deny the" politically correct truth ".

The official silence continues, and in the schools still the 25 of April and the "exemplar" decolonization are counted to the students according to the leftist booklet. In schools, children learn the three D's of the MFA before being taught the National Anthem. But even with all censorship and revisionism, there is happily anyone who still wants to discover the truth.

SAISI