troops rounded up the neighbouring villagers and arrested 60 people. They were
locked inside a house and burnt to death.
In May, 1973, Rhodesian troops in Mu-
cumbura massacred 15 people from a
village. They took others away in their
helicopters, and they were never seen
again.
By the end of 1971, Portuguese soldiers
in Tete ordered civilians to leave their
villages and the day when they were on
their way to other places, they were
attacked by helicopters and savagely
slaughtered. On that occasion, several
mothers were caught with their children
and forced by the Portuguese troops to
crush their babies in mortars. (Reported
also in the South African newspaper THE
STAR, November, 6 1971.)
In February, 1972 Portuguese soldiers
massacred 21 people in the Angonia region in the village of Mukaliwafi, whose
chief is named Chide. All of them were
killed with bayonets. All pregnant women
had their abdomens ripped open.
On July 18, 1972, Portuguese troops took
the people imprisoned in their «strategic
hamlet» in Chiuta to the road between
Chalimbana and Manje. The people were
ordered to dig out several mines the
troops had detected on that road. This
followed the death of several Portuguese
soldiers from the explosion of mines in
the process of de-mining. The people
were told that they had to do that work
because the mines had been laid by their
brothers. Lacking any experience of
explosives, 9 people from the strategic
village were killed attempting to de-mine.
On October, 1972, in the Kapalautsi -
Chiuta area, a Portuguese unit, after
having suffered several casualties in a
FRELIMO ambush, took reprisals against
the defenceless local population of the
area, killing 18 people.
On December i972, the colonialist troops
killed 12 people in the village of Tsemba,
in the zone under chief Chipanda. The
troops arrived in the village in lorries and
ordered 12 people whom they picked up
to enter the lorries to be taken to the
Mawizire administrative post, where, they
said, there would be a meeting. After
driving a few kilometers, the people were
ordered to get out. They were made to
stand in a line and shot by the soldiers, all
12     of them,   including  the headman
Matchona. They were accused of having
helped FRELIMO to carry material to
the front line.
In our reports we have also denounced
an infamous practice which has become
common among Portuguese soldiers: killing all pregnant women by ripping open
their abdomens with bayonets to take
out the foetus in order, in their own
words, «to prevent the birth of new
terrorists)). Sometimes they place explosives inside the woman's dead body as a
booby-trap to kill other villagers when
they bury her.
More recently other voices have also been
raised in Mozambique, especially those of
priests, condemning these crimes. We
recall the overwhelming evidence given by
the White Fathers Missionary Congregation, who decided to leave Mozambique in May, 1971, appalled by the
crimes and torture inflicted on Mozambicans. In October, 1972, a Portuguese
priest, Father Afonso da Costa, revealed
in a Press Conference in Europe, after
being expelled from Mozambique, that
he had irrefutable information that over
one thousand Mozambican civilians had
been massacred in Tete Province alone,
between  March   1971   and  May   1972.
The colonial repression is worsening and
spares no one. In June, 1972, 1800
people were arrested in Southern Mozambique, on the grounds that they had contacts with or were working for FRELIMO.
In January, 1973, two priests were jailed
and sentenced by a military court to terms
of 5 months and 20 months respectively,
charged with having denounced the atrocities of the Portuguese army. In mid-
June, 1972, 30 African Presbyterian
church leaders were arrested and jailed;
two of them, the Head of the Presbyterian Church in Mozambique, and a
member of a local Church Council, were
murdered in jail. In announcing their
deaths in December, 1972, the colonial
authorities alleged that they had «com-
mitted suicide)).
One does not need to look too far to find
the reasons for these acts. It is sufficient
to quote the words of the Commander-
in-Chief of the Portuguese army in Mozambique, General Kaulza de Arriaga. He
has said that «the Portuguese strategy in
Africa should be aimed at achieving an
equilibrium between the black and white
Is the world finally becoming aware?
population)). After having hailed the
export of slaves to Brazil as a good thing,
he put forward the present aims of
Portuguese action: «on the one hand,
the growth of the white population; on
the other, the limitation of the black
population)). He could not have been
more explicit.
It is, therefore, this fascist policy of genocide, combined with the desperation of
the colonialist troops who are suffering
defeat after defeat in their war against
the Mozambican people, which is the root
cause of these bestial acts.
This is the context in which the atrocities
denounced by the Spanish and British
priests should be seen.
Several times we have expressed our regret that the world conscience, the peace
and freedom-loving people, have not
played as effective a role as they both
could and should have done in denouncing
and condemning Portuguese colonialism.
It is our earnest hope that the world-wide
reaction to the recently revealed crimes
of the Portuguese colonial army is an
indication of a growing awareness of the
true nature of Portuguese colonialism and
of the imperative need to oppose and
combat it.
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