
Portugal Takes Responsibility For Wiriyamu Massacre
Maputo, 21 Dec (AIM) – The Portuguese President, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, has accepted Portuguese responsibility for the massacre at Wiriyamu massacre, in the central Mozambican province of Tete
Cited in the Maputo daily “Noticias”, Rebelo de Sousa recognised “It is time for Portugal to fully acknowledge the Wiriyamu massacre, in which colonial troops murdered about a third of the inhabitants of this and four other villages.”
The Wiriyamu massacre was perpetrated by Portuguese troops on December 16, 1972, during Mozambique’s war of national liberation. Unfortunately for the colonial regime, the massacre was denounced shortly after it happened by Catholic missionaries in Tete, thus ensuring that it received much greater publicity than many other colonial atrocities.
The massacre occurred when Portugal was losing ground on the battlefield while ignoring all appeals from the international community to accept the independence of its colonies.
Rebelo de Sousa’s statement comes after the Portuguese Prime Minister, António Costa, during an official visit to Mozambique earlier in the year, apologized to the country “for this barbaric act that Portugal had never acknowledged.”
The Portuguese President said it was “time to accept in full what was the unacceptable and terrible work of some, but ended up blaming Portugal as a whole.”
According to Rebelo de Sousa, Wiriyamu was a sign of the despair that was taking over the Portuguese authorities in the context of the events in Mozambique and the other former colonies at that time.
“It shook all the classic arguments of the official position of Lisbon, as well as the alleged legitimization of the regime and the colonial situation”, he said. “The outrageous violation of human rights, the scale on which it occurred and the frustrated attempt to hide it – which we, those of us in the censored press, remember – left Lisbon’s power with no ground to stand on, hit the military leaders in Mozambique, alerted even more fighting soldiers and created a decisive focus for the ever closer Captains’ Movement (which led to the fall of fascism in Portugal)”, Rebelo de Sousa wrote in his official website, adding that Wiriyamu was a mortal blow to the Portuguese dictatorship and its African policy.
(AIM)
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