NEWS FROM ANGOLA
Dr. Palma Carlos, a well-known Lisbon lawyer was prevented by the PIDE (Portuguese Gestapo) on 23rd July from boarding a plane flying to Luanda, Angola to lead the team for the defence of eight Angolan nationalists, whose trial was due to begin on 25th July in the Military Court of Luanda.
These eight nationalists constitute the first group of some fifty-two against whom criminal proceedings were started in August, 1959. They are accused f having clandestinely distributed leaflets demanding independence for Angola. Over two hundred people (both African and European) were arrested between March and August, 1959, but only these fifty-two were detained in the military jail of Luanda for trial; others were either deported without trial to Bie, Baia dos Tigres and to other jail-camps of Angola, or released after having been beaten. Amongst those who are detained in Luanda jail is the loader Ilidio Machado, who was an officer on the Portuguese administration in Angola, and for some time treasurer of the Post Office Savings Bank of Angola.
During June, 52 Angolans, mostly Civil Servants and employees of Benguela Railways, were arrested in Lobito, Luanda, Malange, Benguela and Dalatando that, in Central Angola. There are also reports of arrests in other parts of Angola.
Dr. Agostinho Neto, a well-known Angolan poet and doctor, was arrested on 8th June. He was flogged by the Chief of Portuguese Gestapo in Angola, and by his assistant, in front of his family and neighbours. Dr Neto had already been in jail in Portugal for two years, from 1954 to 1956.
The Reverend Father Joaquim Pinto de Andrade, Chancellor of the Archbishopric of Luanda, and the only Angolan graduate in theology at the University of Rome, was arrested on 25th June, and deported to Portugal on the 1st July. No charge has been brought against him and no lawyers have been allowed to see him, either when he was imprisoned in Luanda or since his incarceration in Lisbon. He is now detained in Aljube prison, Lisbon, where it is feared that he may be suffering maltreatment at the band of the PIDE.
The 3rd AUGUST is the PORTUGUESE COLONIES INDEPENDENCE DAY, and the peoples from Portuguese colonies are looking forward for an expression of solidarity with their nationalist movement from the British people.
The date was chosen by the Second All-African Peoples’ Conference at Tunis, in memory of over 50 African workers, shot dead in Bissau by Portuguese troops on 3rd August, 1959.
Joao Cabral
Representative of The Movimento Popular
da Libertação de Angola in London,
374 Gray’s Inn Road,
London W.C.I.
July, 1960.
«News from Angola», de João Cabral, sobre interdição a Palma Carlos de se deslocar a Luanda para a defesa do Processo dos 50 (Londres).