Читать книгу Return to the Source - Africa Information Service Staff - Страница 11
ОглавлениеSecond Address Before The United Nations
This speech was given during Amilcar Cabral’s last visit to the United States. Presented before the Twenty-Seventh Session of the Fourth Committee of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, October 16, 1972, its contents were identified: “Questions of Territories under Portuguese Administration.”
For the second time, I have the honor to address the Fourth Committee on behalf of the African people of Guine and the Cape Verde Islands, whose sole, legitimate, and true representative is the PAIGC. I do so with gratification, being fully aware that the members of the Committee are our comrades in the difficult but inspiring struggle for the liberation of peoples and mankind and against oppression of all kinds in the interest of a better life in a world of peace, security and progress.
While not forgetting the often remarkable role that Utopia could play in furthering human progress, the PAIGC is very realistic. We know that among members of the Fourth Committee, there are some who, perhaps in spite of themselves, are duty bound to adopt an obstructionist, if not negative attitude when dealing with problems relating to the struggle for national liberation in Guine and Cape Verde. I venture to say “in spite of themselves” because, leaving aside compelling reasons of State policy, it is difficult to believe that responsible men exist who fundamentally oppose the legitimate aspirations of the African people to live in dignity, freedom, national independence and progress, because in the modern world, to support those who are suffering and fighting for their liberation, it is not necessary to be courageous; it is enough to be honest.
I addressed the Fourth Committee for the first time on 12 December 1962. Ten years is a long and even decisive period in the life of a human being, but a short interval in the history of a people. During that decade sweeping, radical and irreversible changes have occurred in the life of the people of Guine and Cape Verde. Unfortunately, it is impossible for me to refresh the memory of the members of the Committee in order to compare the situation of those days with the present, because most, if not all, of the representatives in the Committee are not the same. I will therefore briefly recapitulate the events up to the present.
On 3 August 1959, at a crucial juncture in the history of the struggle, the Portuguese colonialists committed the massacre of Pidgiguiti, in which the dock workers of Bissau and the river transport strikers were the victims and which, at a cost of 50 killed and over 100 strikers wounded, was a painful lesson for our people, who learned that there was no question of choosing between a peaceful struggle and armed combat; the Portuguese had weapons and were prepared to kill. At a secret meeting of the PAIGC leaders, held at Bissau on 19 September 1959, the decision was taken to suspend all peaceful representations to the authorities in the villages and to prepare for the armed struggle. For that purpose it was necessary to have a solid political base in the countryside. After three years of active and intensive mobilization and organization of the rural populations, PAIGC managed to create that basis in spite of the increasing vigilance of the colonial authorities.
Feeling the winds of change, the Portuguese colonialists launched an extensive campaign of police and military repression against the nationalist forces. In June, 1962, over 2,000 patriots were arrested throughout the country. Several villages were set on fire and their inhabitants massacred. Dozens of Africans were burnt alive or drowned in the rivers and others tortured. The policy of repression stiffened the people’s determination to continue the fight. Some skirmishes broke out between the patriots and the forces of colonialist repression.
Faced with that situation, the patriots considered that only an appropriate and effective intervention by the United Nations in support of the inalienable rights of the people of Guine and the Cape Verde Islands could induce the Portuguese Government to respect international morality and legality. In light of subsequent events, we might well be considered to have been naive. We believed it to be our duty and right to have recourse to the international Organization. In the circumstances we considered it absolutely necessary to appeal to the Fourth Committee. Our message was the appeal of a people confronted with a particularly difficult situation but resolved to pay the price required to regain our dignity and freedom, as also proof of our trust in the strength of the principles and in the capacity for action of the United Nations.
What was the Fourth Committee told at that time? First of all, PAIGC clearly described the reasons for and purposes of its presence in the United Nations and explained that it had come as the representative of the African people of “Portuguese” Guine and the Cape Verde Islands. The people had placed their entire trust in PAIGC, an organization which had mobilized and organized them for the struggle for national liberation. The people had been gagged by the total lack of fundamental freedoms and by the Portuguese colonial repression. They considered those who had defended their interest in every possible way throughout the preceding 15 years of Africa’s history to be their lawful representatives.
PAIGC had come to the Fourth Committee not to make propaganda or to extract resolutions condemning Portuguese colonialism, but to work with the Committee in order to arrive at a constructive solution of a problem which was both that of the people of Guine and Cape Verde and that of the United Nations itself: the immediate liberation of that people from the colonial yoke.
Nor had it come to inveigh against Portuguese colonialism, as had already been done many times—just as attacks had already been made and condemnations uttered against Portuguese colonialism, whose characteristics, subterfuges, methods and activities were already more than well known to the United Nations and world opinion.
PAIGC had come to the Fourth Committee because of the situation actually prevailing in our country and with the backing of international law, in order to seek, together with the members of the Committee, including the Portuguese delegation, the shortest and most effective way of rapidly eliminating Portuguese colonialism from Guine and the Cape Verde Islands.
The time had come for our people and party to dispense with indecision and promises and to adopt definitive decisions and take specific action. We had already agreed to make great sacrifices and were determined to do much more to recover our liberty and human dignity, whatever the path to be followed.
It was not by chance that our presence in the Committee had not been considered indispensable until then. The legal, human and material requisites for action had not existed. In the course of the preceding years those requisites had been gradually accumulating, both for the United Nations and for the people engaged in the struggle, and PAIGC was convinced that the time had come to act and that the United Nations and the people of Guine and Cape Verde could really do so. PAIGC thought that, in order to act, it was necessary to establish close and effective co-operation and that it had the right and duty to help the United Nations so that it, in its turn, could help it to win back national freedom and independence. The help which PAIGC could provide had been mainly specific information on the situation in our country, a clear definition of the position adopted and the submission of specific proposals for a solution.
After describing the situation prevailing in the country, especially with regard to the intensified police and military repression, the fiction of the so-called “reforms” introduced by the Portuguese Government in September 1961 and the future prospects for our struggle, PAIGC analysed the problems relating to the legality or illegality of the struggle.
I will pass over some parts of that statement and confine myself to recalling that it was said that the resolution on decolonization not only imposed on Portugal and the people of Guine and Cape Verde the obligation to end colonial domination in that country but also committed the United Nations itself to take action in order to end colonial domination wherever it existed, with a view to facilitating the national independence of all colonial peoples. The people of Guine and Cape Verde were convinced that the Portuguese Government could not continue obstinately and with impunity to commit an international crime and that the United Nations had all the necessary means at its disposal for ordering and applying practical and effective measures designed to ensure respect for the principles of the Charter, impose international legality in our country and defend the interests of peace and civilization.
The representatives of the people of Guine and the Cape Verde Islands did not come to ask the United Nations to send troops to free our country from the Portuguese colonial yoke, because, even though it might have been able to do so, we did not think it necessary as we were sure of our ability to liberate our own country. We invoked the right to the collaboration and practical assistance of the United Nations with a view to expediting the liberation of our country from the colonial yoke and thus reducing the human and material losses which a protracted struggle might entail.
PAIGC was aware not only of the legality of our struggle but also of the fact that, fighting as we had been by all the means at our disposal for the liberation of our country, we had also been defending international legality, peace and the progress of mankind.
The struggle had ceased to be strictly national and had become international. In Guine and Cape Verde the fight for progress and freedom from poverty, suffering and oppression had been waged in various forms. While it was true that the victims of the fight had been the sons of the people of Guine and Cape Verde, it was also true that each comrade who had succumbed to torture or had fallen under the bullets of the Portuguese colonialists was identified—through the hope and conviction which the people of our country cherished in their hearts and minds—with all peace-loving and freedom-loving men who wished to live a life of progress in the pursuit of happiness.
In our country the fight had been waged not only to fulfill aspirations for freedom and national independence but also—and it would be continued until victory was won—to ensure respect for the resolutions and Charter of the United Nations. In the prisons, towns and fields of our country, a battle had been fought between the United Nations, which had demanded the elimination of the system of colonial domination of peoples, and the armed forces of the Portuguese Government which had sought to perpetuate the system in defiance of the people’s legitimate rights.
The question had risen as to who was actually engaged in the fight. When a fighter had succumbed in our country to police torture, or had been murdered in prison, or burnt alive or machine-gunned by the Portuguese troops, for what cause had he given his life?
He had given his life for the liberation of our people from the colonial yoke and hence for the cause of the United Nations. In fighting and dying for the country’s liberation, he had given his life, in a context of international legality, for the ideals set forth in the Charter and resolutions of the United Nations, especially for the resolution on decolonization.
For our people, the only difference between an Indian soldier, an Italian pilot or a Swedish official who had died in the Congo and the combatant who had died in Guine or the Cape Verde Islands was that the latter, fighting in his own country in the service of the same ideal, was no more than an anonymous combatant for the United Nations cause.
PAIGC believed that the time had come to take stock of the situation and make radical changes in it, since it benefited only the enemies of the United Nations and, more specifically, Portuguese colonialism.
We Africans, having rejected the idea of begging for freedom, which was contrary to our dignity and our sacred right to freedom and independence, reaffirmed our steadfast decision to end colonial domination of our country, no matter what the sacrifices involved, and to conquer for ourselves the opportunity to achieve in peace our own progress and happiness.
With that aim in view and on the basis of that irrevocable decision, PAIGC had defined three possible ways in which the conflict between the Government of Portugal and the African people might evolve and be resolved. Those three possibilities were the following: (a) a radical change in the position of the Portuguese Government; (b) immediate specific action by the United Nations; and (c) a struggle waged exclusively by the people with their own means.
As proof of its confidence in the Organization, and in view of the influence which some of the latter’s Members could certainly exert on the Portuguese Government, PAIGC had taken into consideration only the first two possibilities and in that connection had submitted the following specific proposals:
(a) With regard to the first possibility:
The immediate establishment of contact between the Portuguese delegation and the PAIGC delegation;
Consultations with the Portuguese Government to set an early date for the beginning of negotiations between that Government’s representatives and the lawful representatives of Guinea and the Cape Verde Islands;
Pending negotiations, suspension of repressive acts by the Portuguese colonial forces and of all action by the nationalists.
(b) With regard to the second possibility:
Acceptance of the principle that United Nations assistance would not be really effective unless it was simultaneously moral, political and material;
Immediate establishment within the United Nations of a special committee for the self-determination and national independence of the Territories under Portuguese administration;
Immediate commencement of that committee’s work before the close of the General Assembly session.
PAIGC also stated that it was ready to co-operate fully with that committee and proposed that the latter should be entrusted with the task of giving concrete assistance to our people so that we could free ourselves speedily from the colonial yoke. Since those proposals were not favorably received by the Portuguese Government or the United Nations, the patriotic forces of our country launched a general struggle against the colonialist forces in January 1963 in order to respond, by an armed struggle for liberation, to the colonial genocidal war unleased against the people by the Government of Portugal.
Almost 10 years later, PAGIC is again appearing before the Fourth Committee. The situation is completely different, however, both within the country and at the international level. The Fourth Committee and the United Nations are now better informed than ever before about the situation. In addition to the current information (reports, information bulletins, war communiques and other documents which PAIGC has sent to the United Nations), PAIGC has, in those 10 years appeared before the Decolonization Committee to describe the progress of the struggle and prospects for its future evolution. Dozens of film-makers, journalists, politicians, scientists, writers, artists, photographers, and so on of various nationalities have visited the country on their own initiative and at the invitaton of PAIGC and have provided unanimous and irrefutable testimony regarding the situation. Others—very few in number—have done the same on the colonialist side at the invitation of the Portuguese authorities and, with few exceptions, their testimony has not completely satisfied those authorities. For example, there was the case of the team from the French radio and television organization which visited all the “overseas provinces,” and whose film was rejected by the Lisbon Government because of the part relating to Guine and Cape Verde. That film was shown to the Security Council in Addis Ababa. Another case was that of the group of representatives of the people of the United States, headed by Representative Charles Diggs, whose report on their visit to the country merits careful study by the Committee and anyone else wishing to obtain reliable information on the situation. However, the United Nations has at its disposal information which is, in our view, even more valuable, namely the report of the Special Mission which, at the invitation of PAIGC and duly authorized by the General Assembly, visited the liberated regions of the country in April 1972. I am not, therefore, appearing before the Committee to remedy a lack of information.
Furthermore, the United Nations and world opinion are sufficiently well informed about the crimes against African people committeed daily by the Portuguese colonialists. A number of victims of Portuguese police and military repression have testified before United Nations bodies, particularly the Commission on Human Rights. At the twenty-sixth session, two of my countrymen, one with third-degree napalm burns and the other with mutilated ears and obvious signs of torture appeared before the Committee. Those who have visited my country, including members of the United Nations Special Mission, have been able to see the horrifying consequences of the criminal acts of the Portuguese colonialists against the people and the material goods which are the fruits of their labour. Unfortunately the United Nations, like the African people, is well aware that condemnations and resolutions, no matter how great their moral and political value, will not compel the Portuguese Government to put and end to its crime of lese-humanite*. Consequently, I am not appearing before the Committee in order to obtain more violent condemnations and resolutions against the Portuguese colonialists.
Nor am I urging that an appeal should be made to the allies of the Government of Portugal to cease giving it political suport and material, military, economic and financial assistance, which are factors of primary importance in the continuation of the Portuguese colonial war against Africa, since that has already been done on many past occasions with no positive results. It should be noted, not without regret, that I was right in stating almost 10 years previously that in view of the facts concerning the Portuguese economy and the interests of the States allied to the Government of Portugal, recommending or even demanding a diplomatic, economic and military boycott would not be an effective means of helping the African people. Experience has shown, on the contrary, that in acting or being forced to act as real enemies of the liberation and progress of the African peoples, the allies of the Portuguese Government and in particular some of the main NATO** Powers have not only increased their assistance to the Portuguese colonialists but have systematically avoided or even boycotted any co-operation with the United Nations majority which is seeking to determine legally the political and other steps which might induce the Government of Portugal to comply with the principles of the Organization and the resolutions of the General Assembly. It was not 10 years before but in recent years that the Government of Portugal has received from its allies the largest quantities of war material, jet aircraft, helicopters, gunboats, launches, and so on. It was in 1972, not 1962, that the Government of Portugal received some $500 million in financial assistance from one of its principal allies. If States which call themselves champions of freedom and democracy and defenders of the “free world” and the cause of self-determination and independence of peoples thus persist in supporting and giving practical assistance to the most retrograde colonialism on earth, they must have very good reasons, at least in their own view. Perhaps an effort should be made to understand them, even if their reasons are unavowed or unavowable. It is no doubt necessary to take a realistic approach and to stop dreaming and asking the impossible, for as we Africans say, “only in stories is it possible to cross the river on the shoulders of the crocodile’s friend.”
I am appearing once more before the United Nations to try, as in the past, to obtain from the Organization practical and effective assistance for my struggling people. However, as I have already said and as everyone knows, the current situation is in every way very different from that obtaining in 1962, and the aid which the African people need is likewise different.
During almost 10 years of armed struggle and of enormous efforts and sacrifices, almost three quarters of the national territory has been freed from Portuguese colonial domination and two thirds brought under effective control, which means in concrete terms that in most of the country the people have a solid political organization—that of PAIGC—a developing administrative structure, a judicial structure, a new economy free from all exploitation of the people’s labour, a variety of social and cultural services (health, hygiene, education) and other means of affirming their personality and their ability to shape their destiny and direct their own lives. They also have a military organization entirely composed of and led by sons of the people. The national forces, whose task is to attack the colonialist troops systematically wherever they might be, in order to complete the liberation of the country, like the local armed forces, which are responsible for the defence and security of the liberated areas, are now stronger than ever, tempered by almost 10 years of struggle. That is proved by the colonialists’ inability to recover even the smallest part of the liberated areas by their increasingly heavy losses, and by the people’s ability to deal them increasingly heavy blows, even in the main urban centres such as Bissau, the capital and Bafata, the country’s second largest town.
For the people of Guine and Cape Verde and our national party, however, the greatest success of our struggle does not lie in the fact that we have fought victoriously against the Portuguese colonialist troops under extremely difficult conditions but rather in the fact that, while we were fighting, we began to create all the aspects of a new life—political, administrative, economic, social and cultural—in the liberated areas. It is, to be sure, still a very hard life, since it calls for great effort and sacifice in the face of a genocidal colonial war, but it is a life full of beauty, for it is one of productive, efficient work, freedom and democracy in which the people have regained their dignity. The nearly 10 years of struggle have not only forged a new, strong African nation but also created a new man and a new woman, people possessing an awareness of their rights and duties, on the soil of the African fatherland. Indeed, the most important result of the struggle, which is at the same time its greatest strength, is the new awareness of the country’s men, women and children.
The people of Guine and Cape Verde do not take any great pride in the fact that every day, because of circumstances created and imposed by the Government of Portugal, an increasing number of young Portuguese are dying ingloriously before the Withering fire of the freedom-fighters. What fills us with pride is our ever-increasing national consciousness, our unity—now indestructible—which has been forged in war, the harmonious development and coexistence of the various cultures and ethnic groups, the schools, hospitals and health centres which are operating openly in spite of the bombs and the terrorist attacks of the Portuguese colonialists, the people’s stores which are increasingly able to supply the needs of the population, the increase and qualitative improvement in agricultural production, and the beauty, pride and dignity of our children and our women, who were the most exploited human beings in the country. We take pride in the fact that thousands of adults have been taught to read and write, that the rural inhabitants are receiving medicines that were never available to them before, that no fewer than 497 high- and middle-level civil servants and professional people have been trained, and that 495 young people are studying at higher, secondary and vocational educational establishments in friendly European countries while 15,000 children are attending 156 primary schools and five secondary boarding schools and semi-boarding schools with a staff of 251 teachers. This is the greatest victory of the people of Guine and Cape Verde over the Portuguese colonialists, for it is a victory over ignorance, fear and disease—evils imposed on the African inhabitants for more than a century by Portuguese colonialism.
It is also the clearest proof of the sovereignty enjoyed by the people of Guine and Cape Verde, who are free and sovereign in the greatest part of our national territory. To defend and preserve that sovereignty and expand it throughout the entire national territory, both on the continent and on the islands, the people have not only their armed forces but all the machinery of a State which, under the leadership of the party, is growing stronger and consolidating itself day by day. Indeed, the position of the people of Guine and Cape Verde has for some time been comparable to that of an independent State part of whose national territory—namely, the urban centres—is occupied by foreign military forces. Proof of that is the fact that for some years the people have no longer been subject to economic exploitation by the Portuguese colonialists, since the latter are no longer able to exploit them. The people of Guine and Cape Verde are all the more certain of gaining their freedom because of the fact that, both in the urban centres and in the occupied areas, the clandestine organization and political activities of the freedom-fighters are more vigorous than ever.
There is no force capable of preventing the complete liberation of my people and the attainment of national independence by my country. Nothing can destroy the unity of the African people of Guine and Cape Verde and our unshakable determination to free the entire national territory from the Portuguese colonial yoke and military occupation.
Confronted with that situation and that determination, what is the attitude of the Portuguese Government? Up until the death of Salazar, whose outmoded ways of thinking made it impossible for him to conceive of granting even fictitious concessions to the Africans there was talk only of radicalizing the colonial war. Salazar, who would repeat over and over to anyone willing to listen that “Africa does not exist” (an assertion which clearly reflected an insane racism but which also perfectly summed up the principles and practices which have always characterized Portuguese colonial policy), was at his advanced age unable to survive the affirmation of Africa’s existence: the victorious armed resistance of the African peoples to the Portuguese colonial war. Salazar was nothing more than a fanatical believer in the doctrine of European superiority and African inferiority. As everyone knew, Africa was the sickness that killed Salazar.
Marcelo Caetano, his successor, is also a theoretician (professor of colonial law at the Lisbon School of Law) and a practical politician (Minister of Colonies for many years). Caetano, who claims that he “knows the blacks,” has decided on a new policy which, in the sphere of social relationships, is to be that of a kind of master who holds out the hand of friendship to his boy”; politically speaking the new policy is in its essence nothing more than the old tactic of force and deceit while outwardly it makes use of the arguments and even the actual words of the adversary in order to confuse him while actually maintaining the same position. That is the difference between the Salazarism of Salazar and the neo-Salazarism of Caetano. The objective remains the same: to perpetuate white domination of the black masses of Guine and Cape Verde.
Caetano’s new tactic, which the people refer to as “the policy of smiling and bloodshed,” is merely one more result and success of the struggle being waged by the Africans. That fact has been noted by many who have visited the remaining occupied areas of Guine and in Cape Verde, including the American Congressman, Charles Diggs, and it is also understood by the people of the occcupied areas who replied to the colonialists’ demagogic concessions with the words “Djarama, PAIGC,” i.e. “Thank you, PAIGC.” In spite of those concessions and the launching of a vast propaganda campaign both in Africa and internationally, the new policy has failed. The people of the liberated areas are more united than ever around the national party, while those of the urban centres and the remaining occupied areas are supporting the party’s struggle more strongly every day both in Guine and Cape Verde. Hundreds of young people are leaving the urban centres, especially Bissau, to join the fight. There are increasing desertions from the so-called unidades africanas*, many of whose members are being held prisoner by the colonial authorities.
Confronted with that situation, the colonialists are resorting to increased repression in the occupied areas, particularly the cities, and stepping up the bombings and terrorist attacks against the liberated areas. Having been forced to recognize that they cannot win the war, they now know that no stratagem can demoralize the people of those areas and that nothing can halt our advance towards complete liberation and independence. They are therefore making extensive use of the means available to them and attempting at all costs to destroy as many lives and as much property as they can. The colonialists are making increased use of napalm and are actively preparing to use toxic substances, herbicides and defoliants, of which they have large supplies in Bissau, against the freedom-fighters.
The Portuguese Government’s desperation is all the more understandable because of the fact that the peoples of Angola and Mozambique are succeeding in their struggle and that the people of Portugal are becoming more strongly opposed to the colonial wars every day. In spite of appearances, Portugal’s economic, political and social position is steadily deteriorating and the population declining, mainly because of the colonial wars. I wish to reaffirm my people’s solidarity not only with the fraternal African peoples of Angola and Mozambique but also with the people of Portugal, whom my own people have never equated with Portuguese colonialism. My people are more convinced than ever that the struggle being waged in Guine and Cape Verde and the complete liberation of that Territory will be in the best interests of the people of Portugal, with whom we wish to establish and develop the best possible relations on the basis of co-operation, solidarity and friendship in order to promote genuine progress in my country once it wins its independence.
Although the Portuguese Government has persisted in its absurd, inhuman policy of colonial war for almost 10 years, the United Nations has made a significant moral and political contribution to the progress of my people’s liberation struggle. The resolutions proclaiming that it is legitimate to carry on that struggle by any means necessary, the appeal to Member States to extend all possible assistance to the African liberation movements, the recommendations to the specialized agencies to co-operate with those movements through OAU* the granting of hearings to their representatives at the Security Council meetings in Addis Ababa, the granting of observer status to certain liberation movements and, in my own case, the Special Mission’s visit to my country and the recognition of my party by the Committee on Decolonization as the only legitimate, authentic representative of the people of Guine and Cape Verde represented important assistance to those struggling peoples. We are grateful for the aid received, from the Committee on Decolonization and its dynamic Chairman, the Fourth Committee and, through it, the General Assembly and all Member States which are sympathetic to our cause.
Nevertheless, I do not feel that there is nothing more the United Nations can do to aid my people’s struggle. I am convinced that the Organization can and must do more to hasten the end of the colonial war in my country and the complete liberation of my people. I have for that reason submitted specific proposals to the Security Council in Addis Ababa. Because of my confidence in the United Nations and in its ability to take action in the specific case of Guine and Cape Verde, I am now submitting new proposals aimed at the establishment of closer, more effective co-operation between the Organization and the national party, which is the legitimate representative of the people of Guine and Cape Verde. Before doing so, I would draw attention to some important events that have taken place in my country in recent months.
I will not speak about the successes achieved by the freedom-fighters during the past year, although they have been significant ones. I will begin by referring to the United Nations Special Mission’s visit to my country, which was made in April despite the terrorist aggression launched by the Portuguese colonialists against the liberated south in an effort to prevent the visit from taking place. An historic and unique landmark for the United Nations and the liberation movements, the visit was unquestionably a great victory for my people but it was also one for the international organization and for mankind. It provided a new stimulus to the courage and determination of my people and its fighters, who were willing to make sacrifices in order to make it possible. While it is true that the findings of the Special Mission merely added more evidence of the same kind as had been given by many unimpeachably reliable visitors, various professional persons and nationalists, they nevertheless have special value and significance, since they are findings of the United Nations itself, made by an official mission duly authorized by the General Assembly and consisting of respected representatives of three Member States. I emphasize the great importance of the Special Mission’s success, express my gratitude to the General Assembly for authorizing it and to Ecuador, Sweden and Tunisia for allowing their distinguished representatives, Mr. Horacio Sevilla Borja, Mr. Folke Lofgren and Mr. Kamel Belkhira, to participate in it and again congratulate all the participants and Secretariat staff members on having performed with exemplary courage, determination and conscientiousness the duties of a historic and profoundly humanitarian assignment in the service of the United Nations and of the people of Guine and Cape Verde, and hence in the service of mankind.
Any action, regardless of its motives, is sterile unless it produces practical and concrete results. PAIGC’s motive in inviting the United Nations to send a Special Mission to its country was not to prove the sovereignty of the people of Guine over vast areas of the country, a fact which was already clear to everyone; instead, it deliberately tried to give the United Nations another specific basis for taking effective measures against Portuguese colonialism. That basis has been established by the success of the Special Mission; it seems just and essential to take full advantage of it, since PAIGC, like the Special Mission, is convinced that the political situation of the people of Guine, including their legal situation, cannot remain as it has been in the past. PAIGC is also convinced that the United Nations will be able to implement the recommendations of the Special Mission and declares its readiness to extend whatever cooperation is needed to that end.
Like any important event, the Mission’s success involved some amusing sidelights, such as the desperate and preposterous response expressed both orally and in writing by the Lisbon Government. In that connection I quote a proverb current among the people of Guine, “A person who spits at the sun succeeds only in dirtying his own face.”
Another important event is the establishment of the first National Assembly of the people of Guine. Universal general elections have just been held by secret ballot in all the liberated areas for the purpose of forming regional councils and choosing the 120 representatives to the first National Assembly, 80 elected by the masses of the people and 40 chosen from among the members of the Party. The people of Guine and PAIGC are firmly resolved to take full advantage of the establishment of our new organs of sovereignty. The National Assembly will proclaim the existence of the State of Guine and give it an executive authority that will function within the country. In that connection, PAIGC is sure of the fraternal and active support of the independent African States and feels encouraged by the certainty that not only Africa but also the United Nations and all genuinely anti-colonialist States will fully appreciate the political and legal development of the situation in that African nation. In point of fact, at the present stage of the struggle the Government of Portugal neither can nor should represent the people of Guine either in the United Nations or in any other international organization or agency, just as it can never represent it in the OAU.
For that reason, PAIGC is not raising the question of calling for the expulsion of Portugal from the United Nations or from any other international organization. The real question is whether or not the people of Guine, who hold sovereignty over most of their national territory, and who have just formed their first National Assembly which is going to proclaim the existence of its State, headed by an executive authority, have the right to become a member of the international community within the framework of its organizations, even though part of its country is occupied by foreign military forces. The real question before the people of Guine, which has to be answered categorically, is whether the United Nations and all the anti-colonialist forces are prepared to strengthen their support and their moral, political and material assistance to that African nation as their specific capabilities permit.
