TERROR IN ANGOLA |
The GRAE [Revolutionary Government of Angola in Exile] has released excerpts from a report received from the underground freedom_fighters in the Portuguese African colony. The report accuses the PIDE [International Police for the Defense of the Portuguese State] of stepping up its arbitrary arrests, torture and summary executions in the colonialist jails.
During September, twenty-one people were killed in the streets of Luanda alone, They were accused of opposing Portuguese colonialist rule.
"Tens of thousands of patriots are jammed in the prisons in complete disregard of their rights, Every day, we learn from our people among them, hearterending and chilling screams are heard from men savagely beaten with clubs," the report declares.
"Patriots who have succeeded in escaping from these prisons tell terrible stories, Often in certain areas of the country, the Portuguese soldiers, after suffering a reversal at the hands of units of the National Liberation Army of Angola, descend on villages and arrest all the. inhabitants, men, women and children of all ages. They are then taken to improvised prisons where they are submitted to the most cruel treatment. This includes injection of poisons, burial of the body up to the shoulders leaving the head out to be crushed by tanks, hanging by the feet for beat~ ings that continue until death ensues, insertion of bayonets and other instruments in the rectun, ete."
This, says the report, is "the Christian civilizing mission of Por= tugal in Africa," and this is what the Portuguese and their Western accom~ plices refer to when they speak about the "defense of the West,"
TWENTY WOMEN AND CHILDREN