Re: [GRN] Antonio Costa and Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, the president of Portugal

Sun, 05 May 2024 10:21:47 -0700

Pedro,
 
You hate too much Portugal and the Portuguese to be a reliable source of information or a fair analyst of the Portuguese actions. We did enough bad things throughout our history not to need your fairytales to pass judgement on us. When I was teaching at the university, in Lisbon, one of my colleague professors was a black Angolan who had been a top cadre of UNITA and had been sent to the São Nicolau camp. I once asked him about his experience there and he told me he had never been tortured or mistreated, although conditions were rough. I have no doubt torture was used under certain circumstances, but people who were already convicted of deeds against the security of the state, and were already in prison, had no reason to be further interrogated and tortured. The idea was to keep them away and prevent them from continuing fighting against Portuguese rule. As to PIDE, they organized counter terrorism units made up of former guerrilleros in Angola and Mozambique, the so called Flechas. I doubt they would have been able to recruit as many guerrillas as they did if they had systematically tortured their prisoners. Yes, torture was used but not as indiscriminately as you suggest. Which doesn't make PIDE a better organization. They were the violent tools of repression and must be condemned by all of us. But we have nothing to gain by trying to make them more brutal and murderous than they already were. Violence, torture and repression have been the tools of many states, some of them supposedly democratic. Like the actions of the UK on Northern Ireland against IRA. Or US actions in Iraq. Or French actions in Algeria. We are unfortunately a murderous species...
 
Best regards
 
Nuno
 
 
Sent: Sunday, May 05, 2024 at 3:10 PM
From: "'Pedro Mascarenhas' via Goa-Research-Net" <goa-research-net@googlegroups.com>
To: "goa-research-net@googlegroups.com" <goa-research-net@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [GRN] Antonio Costa and Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, the president of Portugal
 
 
Quoting Hemingway's story about the fisherman and the huge fish that were nothing more than bones when they were brought ashore. The big fish were the colonies and the fisherman is Salazar. It's not worth whitewashing the true story. 
 
The most important thing is that Africa expelled the racists. 
 
We are not talking about the Portuguese people who on April 25, 2024 took to the streets to express the joy of democracy.

See the video : https://ensina.rtp.pt/artigo/os-carceres-do-imperio/

Although little documented, the history of the activities of the Portuguese Portuguese police (PIDE) in the colonies, during the Estado Novo, takes us to a world of atrocities committed before, but especially after the start of the colonial war. A vast network of jails and work camps were merciless prisons for thousands who opposed the regime and their representatives were never punished.

In 1961, with the start of the war in Angola, the PIDE (International and State Defense Police) created its own delegations, sub-delegations, posts, mobile brigades and militias overseas. Contrary to what was happening in Portugal, in Africa the agents were well regarded and considered as allies by the racist. The objective was to persecute the nationalists and, to this end, they had a vast system of prisons and work camps, which were nothing more than concentration camps.

Tarrafal, on the Cape Verdean island of Santiago, is perhaps the best-known prison in the colonies. From 1962 onwards, it opened its doors again to house mainly prisoners linked to the struggles for self-determination, such as Luandino Vieira or Justino Pinto de Andrade.

But the great atrocities of political jailers extended to other colonies. Cases such as the Machava prison, in the Mozambican capital, which became known as the most sinister of overseas prisons, where in the PIDE section, torture was everyday life. 12 men were kept in an individual cell. He died from asphyxiation. The barbarity in prisons was rampant and the killing would go unnoticed, in Portugal, in the pages of post-revolution justice.

In addition to the jails, the political police created recovery centers. Case of São Nicolau, in Angola, where nationalist guerrillas were taken, mixed with populations displaced by the conflict. In these camps there were prisons, work zones and even satellite villages. The conditions were inhumane: cells measuring 20 by 40 meters, with 200 people, sexual rape, various types of torture, burial of people alive, crucifixions, shootings.

On Sunday, May 5, 2024 at 11:39:02 AM GMT+1, 'Nuno Cardoso da Silva' via Goa-Research-Net <goa-research-net@googlegroups.com> wrote:
 
 
Alberto,
 
I suppose we all agree that colonization is a vile violation of the rights of the colonized peoples. But it weren't "the heavy losses inflicted by FRELIMO and the MPLA on Portuguese colonial troops in Mozambique and the North and East of Angola, which precipitated the events that led to the uprising and military coup of April 25, 1974 in Portugal." In 1973 the independence forces in Angola were completely defeated and in Mozambique they were on the way to be neutralized. Only the situation in Guinea Bissau was problematic, and the 1974 uprising was exclusively due to Spinola and the officers in Guinea Bissau wanting to force the Lisbon goverment to accept talking to PAIGC. And, by the way, I was in June 1973 in Bissau talking to those officers, and while they openly threatened to take action in Lisbon, once back in Portugal, not one of them ever mentioned "liberdade" and "democracia" as justifications for the promised uprising. Those two concepts were quite foreign to professional officers educated and trained at the Estado Novo military academies.
 
Regards
 
Nuno
 
 
Sent: Saturday, May 04, 2024 at 2:42 PM
From: albert...@sapo.pt
To: goa-research-net@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [GRN] Antonio Costa and Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, the president of Portugal

 

Paulo. Please do not distort the true history of colonization.

 

Read, here, some excerpts from the president of Angola in Lisbon. Jornal de Angola.

 

He said - Allow me to begin by thanking President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa for the kind invitation extended to us to participate in the celebrations of the Fiftieth Anniversary of April 25, 1974.

 

While the Portuguese people fought against fascism and the Salazar dictatorship since 1932, we, the African people colonized by Portugal, HAD BEEN FIGHTING SINCE THE 15TH CENTURY AGAINST PORTUGUESE COLONIZATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES SUCH AS SLAVERY AND THE PLUNDERING OF OUR WEALTH.  
WE FOUGHT FOR AN END TO THE ABUSES, CRIMES AND VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTED BY THE COLONIALIST REGIME AGAINST OUR PEOPLE FOR CENTURIES. WE FOUGHT FOR OUR DIGNITY AS HUMAN BEINGS, WHO MUST HAVE THE SAME RIGHT TO FREEDOM, THE RIGHT TO BE THE MASTERS OF OUR OWN DESTINY.

 

 

 

The armed struggles for our Independence in Guinea Bissau, Angola and Mozambique have reached such an advanced stage, especially after the failure of the Mar Verde operation, the assassination of Amílcar Cabral and the proclamation of Independence by the PAIGC in the hills of Madina de Boé in 1973 in Guinea Bissau, the fiasco of the Nó Górdio operation and  
Regards
Alberto 
 

 

 
I think I will agree with Nuno.
Portugal enriched itself with spices early in time more than it did in more recent times. It benefited mostly due to trade. It did not rob Goa and its people of anything like others did. And it developed the place quite well then.
The British pillaged more stuff from India like gold, diamonds and other precious stones, tea, etc.
The Spanish were terrible, it was mostly gold and silver from their South American possessions that impoverished these nations.
The French were worse, besides all the above, they have signed contracts with places like Haiti to have the colonies pay for damages to the slave owning colonisers! They are still paying a 1825 debt today, no wonder they are bankrupt.
Being born in Angola and grown up in Goa too, life in Portuguese colonies was different from those of other European powers then. In Angola were we lived it was paradise and the black people had also equal rights and quality of life. No discrimination like the British did in India and the French and Spanish did elsewhere.
One of the major contributions to Goa, the amazing drainage system, was destroyed by these BJP corrupt politicians who invent new ways to swindle the population.
India needs to do reparations to Goa for the damage it is doing to the state and for the money it is robbing its people.
Modern colonisers.
JP
From: 'Nuno Cardoso da Silva' via Goa-Research-Net <goa-research-net@googlegroups.com>
Sent: 26 April 2024 07:56
To: goa-research-net@googlegroups.com <goa-research-net@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [GRN] Antonio Costa and Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, the president of Portugal
 
Yes, throughout the centuries Portugal comitted crimes. Just like every other country on Earth. But we also helped to build. Without Portugal there would be no Goan State in India, and Goans would be a lot different, not necessarily better. Without Portugal there wouldn't be a great nation such as Brazil. There wouldn't be a great Angolan state, with a strong sense of identity, with a prosperous economy built on much of what Portugal built over four and a half centuries. There wouldn't have been a tolerant Timorese nation, so different from Indonesia. There wouldn't have been a marvellously mixed nation such a Cape Verde, where the colour of skin is completely irrelevant. We took a lot away from those countries, but I believe we gave back a lot more than we took. No reparations are needed.
 
Nuno Cardoso da Silva 
 
 
Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2024 at 11:56 AM
From: "'Pedro Mascarenhas' via Goa-Research-Net" <goa-research-net@googlegroups.com>
To: "Goa-Research-Net" <goa-research-net@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [GRN] Antonio Costa and Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, the president of Portugal
The Portugal’s president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, expressed some opinions  at an event with foreign journalists on Tuesday . ( In the month in which 50 years of democracy in Portugal - 25/04/2024)



 




He said António Costa, former prime-minister, son of a Goan, as someone reflective, the result of eastern ancestry, while Luís Montenegro, the new prime-minister, is “completely different”.



The head of state did not fail to analyze himself in this aspect. “I’m a hurried Westerner,” he defined.



The statement about Montenegro came when he explained how he saw the change of Government ahead of schedule. “He [Luís Montenegro] is a person who comes from a deep, urban-rural country, with rural behaviors. He is very curious, difficult to understand, precisely because of this.



Marcelo added that he “would be happy” and accustomed to António Costa's governance until 2026, but the dissolution of Parliament was necessary given his resignation as prime minister and secretary-general of the Socialist Party (PS).



In the interview with foreign journalists, the President of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa declared late on Tuesday that Portugal was responsible for crimes committed during transatlantic slavery and the colonial era, indicating a necessity for reparations. 




  




https://www.dn.pt/6486274197/marcelo-faz-analises-e-comparacoes-entre-costa-e-luis-montenegro/



https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/24/portugal-pay-costs-slavery-colonialism-president



 

 

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