The Portuguese government has announced that it is going to put some reforms into effect in its African colonies. According to these reforms, the entire population of Guinea will be regarded as civilised. This means that about 99.7 per cent of the African population of our country will in future in principle enjoy the rights of citizenship which were always denied them by the Portuguese government.

It is clear that, for world opinion as for us, this change of attitude on the part of the Portuguese government is a specific result – a conquest – of the heroic struggle by our people for national independence. On the other hand, everyone recognises that the Portuguese government in taking that decision to grant us Portuguese citizenship without considering our views has once more spurned the rights of our people to selfdetermination. In these circumstances, the reform in question must be interpreted as an attempt to put the brake on the development of our liberation struggle. The Portuguese government knows very well that the peoples of Guinea and Cape Verde are not struggling to be Portuguese: we are struggling to win national independence.

In order to achieve this sacred objective, our peoples are firmly decided to have recourse to all possible means. This is proved by the direct action already launched in Guinea and by the great unrest which reigns in Cape Verde, as a response to the police and armed repression practised in silence by the Portuguese colonialist forces. Our people possess and will increasingly possess the means needed to bring about the total destruction of the bases of Portuguese colonial exploitation in our countries.

However, the African Independence Party, expressing the just aspirations of our peoples to national independence, peace, progress and peaceful co-operation with all peoples, including those of Portugal, again takes the initiative of proposing to the Portuguese government that it resolves by peaceful means the conflict which sets our peoples against it, thus following the example of what was done by the governments of other colonial powers in Africa.