v-PORTUGUESE ATROCITIES Mh
MOZAMBIQUE
On August 7th and 8th 1970, the Ad Hoc Working Group of Experts established under resolution 2(XX! 11) of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights met in Dar es Salaam,
Tanzania. They heard evidence on the conditions in Southern Africa from many witnesses,
including FRELIMO militants who were brought out of Mozambique especially to address
the meeting:
Zacharias Vanomba aged 53, farmer in Mueda
Muarabu Shauri aged 56, fisherman from Mocimboa da Praia
Abdala Ligela age unknown, FRELIMO freedom fighter from Vila Cabral
Postane Penasse aged 29, from Tete, formerly tractor driver, now FRELIMO
freedom fighter.
Drawing solely on their own experiences, the witnesses gave
vivid accounts of Portuguese brutality and oppression: of
the economic exploitation and forced labour, of the harsh
intimidation of local populations who might support the
guerrillas, and of the mass arrests and imprisonment with
daily PIDE tortures.
Despite the so-called abolition of forced cultivation and
forced labour both comrades Shauri and Vanomba listed the
low prices paid for the peoples' crops - castor oil, millet, cashew, oil seeds, peanuts, cotton - and the high prices that
these same commodities cost in the shops, all prices being
fixed by the Portuguese authorities. Plantation workers were
paid 2.50 esc. per day (women 2 esc), had to work from
sunrise to sunset, and to provide their own food. Vanomba
described how the peasants were obliged to work on road
construction and other public works without payment.
«When they ask for their payment for this work the
Portuguese say that many things cross the road, including snakes and lions, so they should go and ask them
to pay too.»
The Chairman of the Working Group asked about forced
labour being sent to South Africa and elsewhere. Comrade
Vanomba said that as he came from the north and had been
in prison all the time he was in the south, he did not have any
personal experience of this, although his fellow-prisoners who
came from the south had often told him about this «xibalo»-
forced labour by arresting people and sending them to the
South African mines. Shauri said that his parents had been
arrested and taken to work in the South Afiican mines and
had died there.
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Portuguese treatment of the civilian populations was described
by comrade Abdala Ligela:
«l am the only one remaining from my family. One day
the Portuguese came to Mkwela, my village and arrested
about twelve people, including five from my family.
Some were killed on the spot and others taken to concen
tration camps. Two men were beheaded, and three of
of the women cut in the stomach - two of them were
pregnant.
I was not arrested that day because I escaped, but I was
able to see what was happening to the others. After the
arrest they bombed the place with napalm. Five more
people were killed, two women and three children, and
two more wounded, myself and a child. I was taken to
the FRELIMO hospital in Niassa Province, at Kaloloma,
where I was cured and then able to return home.»
«When the Portuguese army comes into the bush looking
for guerrillas they kill civilians and bomb the crops they
find on the way. They not only kill civilians, but even
after killing continue to torture their dead bodies. If
they cannot bomb the grain they put mines around the
storehouses where the grain is kept, so that if any villager wants grain he is killed by the mines. When they
arrive at some fields where the crops have already grown
and they cannot burn them, they just cut them down
with sickles. When they leave they scatter leaflets
saying that they cut down the crops because they help
feed bandits. The purpose of this is to make the civilians hungry so they will surrender to them.»
In addition to terror, another well-known Portuguese method
of controlling the local populations is the strategic hamlet and