Conferência de imprensa de Abel Djassi em Londres, em nome da FRAIN

FRENTE REVOLUCIONARIA AFRICANA PARA A INDEPENDENCIA NACIONAL DAS COLONIAS PORTUGUESAS
(F.R.I.A.N)

PORTUGUESE COLONIALISM ON TRIAL FOR THE FIRST TIME

A statement to the Press and Radio - 

11 million Africans, over an area of 2 million sq kilometers, are still suffering under Portuguese colonial domination. And Portugal is the most backward country in Europe.

This is one of the most tragic situations of today, not only as it affects Africans but for all humanity. In the African zone of silence’ 11 million human beings are living like serfs in their own country, condemned do a way of life which is even worse than that which Nazism wished to impose on Europeans. They are deprived of even the most basic human rights. After five centuries in Africa, Portuguese colonialism, which is the most backwards in regards to material achievements and social and political developments, condemns the Africans to conditions of abject misery, and this in the name of Christian civilisation. The Africans are kept in ignorance and subjected to forced labour. Both the human and natural resources of these colonies are exploited and mortgaged at the lowest possible value. The colonialists deny the practice of Christian principles in their lack of reverence for the human being. They class 99.7% of the Africans they dominate as “uncivilized”, they use all means to hide the effects of their “civilizing influence”, they detain and murder African patriots and they are making preparations to launch new colonial wars.

Portuguese colonialism can only offer flimsy arguments to justify its presence and conceal its crimes. Among these is the argument of ‘historical rights’, which was buried at the Berlin Conference on 1885 and that of the ‘miracle’ of the ‘civilizing action’ carried out by an underdeveloped country, a majority of whose population is illiterate. There is also the false colonialist theory of so-called ‘assimilation’ which is based on racism and which, after 500 years, has in practice only ‘assimilated’ 0.03% of the African people. Another argument is the myth of ‘multi-racialism’, legally based on the Native Statute, which means Apartheid. They have also created the constitutional sham of ‘national unity’ between the colonies as a means of avoiding the responsibilities set cut in the United Nations Charter and they maintain a kind of political and social state of ‘peace’ which, under a Fascist colonial regime, ensures the complete suppression of all human rights.

In spite of all this, the Africans are organizing themselves and fighting Portuguese colonialism, tough this action is of course clandestine. A few popularly based parties and organisation are leading this fight, waged under the most difficult conditions; the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola, the Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné, the União das Populações de Angola, the Movimento de Libertação dos Territórios Africanos Sob Dominação Colonial Portuguese and the Movimento Anti-Colonialista (M.A.C) This last group, as a coordinating organisation for furthering the anti-colonialist struggle, comprising African parties and individuals from the various colonies, made way for the creation of the Frente Revolucionária Para a Independência Nacional das Colónias Portuguesas (F.R.A.I.N.) at the 2nd ALL African Peoples Conference (Tunis, January 1960) which was attended by five delegates from the Portuguese colonies. The Africans who have left these colonies are organized or becoming organized for the struggle against Portuguese colonialism.

In spite of the ‘curtain or silence’ and all the attempts to conceal the true facts, Portuguese colonialism has been exposed to world public opinion. This exposure, due to the actions of African patriots and a few writers and journalists who were able to escape official notice, took a very dramatic form at the last session of the U.N General Assembly.

Added to their preparations for a colonial war, a few years ago the Portuguese colonialists started a ruthless campaign of repression against the Africans and their nationalists organisations and this was directly due to their exposure and to the African fight for liberation. Below are some of the results of this campaign, carried on by the colonial gestapo, the army, the administration and the settlers:

200 people from the Cabinda District and U.P.A. members Julio Afonso, Isaias Katmutuke, Alfredo Benge, Cunha, Loureiro Sequeira and Ambrosio Luyanzi have been arrested and reported missing. The leaders Liberio Newfane and Lello Figueira and the nationalist religious leader Simão Toco have been arrested and sent to concentration and forced labour camps. Since March 1959 more than 100 Africans have been arrested in Portuguese Guinea, Mozambique and Angola, among them Ilidio Machado, Vieira Dias, Gabriel Leitão, Francisco Africano, André Mingas, Mendes Carvalho, Noe Saude and many others. 14 Africans are in exile and are being sought by the Angola colonial police, among them Viriato da Cruz, Lucio Lara, Mario Andrade, Martias Migueis, Manuel Costa, João Pinok, Manuel Nacaca, Onefire Osusana, Jorge Mingas. 6 Europeans have been arrested and accused of helping Africans one of whom is Dr. Julieta Gandra. More than 1,000 Africans have been killed in massacres (S. Tome, February 1953) and more than 50 (Bissau, Guinea, August 1959)

In Luanda, Angola, the fascist colonial tribunal which is presided over by a settler, is ready to ‘judge’ dozens of Africans accused of belonging to the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola and of attempts against the ‘external security’ of the State of Portugal and against Portuguese national unity (Art, 141 and 151 of the Portuguese Penal Code). The same accusations in being levelled at the 6 Europeans arrested. The law provides penalties of up to 25 years in prison. The Africans know from bitter experience just what the laws of Portuguese Fascist colonialism mean.

World public opinion must be roused about these trials. It is neither the African patriots who are fighting for the right to live as Men or the honest Europeans who are friends of the African people who should be judged at the tribunals of Luanda. These tribunals should provide the first public judgement of Portuguese colonialism. World public opinion, democratic peoples and organisation who love Peace and Freedom, the mass communication media, honest and responsible men from all countries would not be misguided in paying careful attention to this judgement. For they must be there at the side of the Africans.

Because it is really the judgement of a case between Portuguese colonialism and Humanity, in which Portugal is on trial for the crime of the exploitation, the waste, the humiliation and the partially successful attempt to destroy 11 million human beings.

LONDON, March 3rd. 1960

On behalf of the Steering Committee 
of the F.R.A.I.N.

ABEL DJASSI
(Member of the S.C.)