19 - Message To the Soldiers, Officers and Ncos of the Portuguese Colonial Army
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 February 2020
Summary
The moment of truth has come, the time has come for you to have the real proof of all that our party has announced to you with the humane intention of helping you to protect your lives against the criminal lies and orders of your colonialist bosses.
At this difficult time, as filled with hopes and certainties for our people as it is filled with despair and doubts for you, we want to repeat what we have already told you.
Our people who will fight until victory for the independence of our land, are not the enemy of the Portuguese people. You are the sons of the Portuguese people, but you are being used by the colonialists as tools to kill our people, in order to try to prevent us being free and masters of our own land.
We want peace, freedom and co-operation between men and between all peoples. But for this very reason and cause, we must put an end to Portuguese colonialism in our land, we must remove all obstacles to our national independence, we are fighting and are going to eliminate all those who, with weapons in hand, seek but certainly in vain to prevent the liberation of our people.
Portuguese soldiers, NCOs and officers!
You know, and everyone knows – and the Portuguese government itself before anyone – that the cause of the colonialists is an unjust and a lost cause. You know as well that no power in the world will be able to prevent the liberation of our people from the colonial yoke.
We are aware of this truth, we fight bravely against you and we shall fight until victory. Experience has already shown you that all the descendants of our land – young and old, men and women, children even – are ready to give their life for the freedom, progress and happiness of our people.
And you – Portuguese soldiers, officers and NCOs, the youth of Portugal, the hope of your people – why and for what are you dying in our land?
From the dozens of your countrymen who have already died in our land – soon they will be hundreds and may become thousands – look at the cases of the soldiers No. 834/59, Veríssimo Godinho Ramos and No.224/60, Fernando Cristiano Pereira, Lance-Corporal Francisco Moreira and Corporal Abílio Monteiro de Brito.
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- Information
- Unity and StruggleSelected Speeches and Writings, pp. 213 - 215Publisher: University of South AfricaPrint publication year: 2004