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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Vol 36 No. 12. 6 June 1973
The Mueda Massacre
The Mueda Massacre
Thirteen years ago this month, the Portuguese committed an outrage in Mozambique which makes Sharpeville look like a minor incident. On June 14, 1960, Portuguese soldiers opened fire after provoking a demonstration in the town of Meuda in Northern Mozambique. Between 500 and 600 people were killed, in what has since become known as the Mueda Massacre.
'How did it happen? Well, some of these men had made contact with the authorities and asked for more liberty and more pay...After a while, when peopl were giving support to these leaders, the Portuguese sent police through the villages inviting people to a meeting at Mueda. Several thousand people came to hear what the Portuguese would say.
'Then the governor invited our leaders into the administrator's office. When they came outside, the governor asked the crowd who wanted to speak, and the governor told them all to stand to one side.
'Then without another word he ordered the police to bind the hands of those who had stood on one side, and the police began beating them. When the people saw what was happening, they began to demonstrate against the Portuguese, and the Portuguese simply ordered the police trucks to come and collect these arrested persons. So there were more demonstrations against this. At that moment the troops were still hidden, and the people went up close to the police to stop the arrested persons from being taken away. So the governor called the troops, and when they appeared he told them to open fire. They killed about 600 people.'
The Mueda Massacre, which passed unnoticed in the world press, was the climax of Portugal's policy of brutally repressing peaceful resistance to its rule in Mozambique. It convinced nationalist groups that the only path was armed resistance, and within a year Frelimo, the Mozambique Liberation Front, had been formed.
In subsequent years Frelimo has succeeded in liberating large areas of Mozambique, including entire provinces, where a rudimentary new social structure has been set up. Frelimo, however, faces powerful enemies. Portugal would never be able to stand up to the resistance forces were it not for foreign assistance. Arms for the war come from her NATO allies, especially the United Stales, West Germany and Britain, and money comes also from large war taxes from international companies which have a vested interest in the maintenance of Portuguese rule in Mozambique, Angola and Guine-Bissau. Portugal's southern neighbour in Mozambique, South Africa, also supplies arms and soldiers, and possesses large interest in the country which it is not willing to give up. Mozambique's large common border with South Africa and Rhodesia adds further to the strategic significance of the war. The Cabora Bassa dam, being constructed with foreign capital in the Tete province of Mozambique, is a visable symbol of the growing economic integration of the three white supremacist powers in Southern Africa. It will provide power and irrigation for all three countries. It is one of Frelimo's declared targets.
—Joris de Bres
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Portuguese colonists spend a large portion of the national budget on the maintenance of colonial troops, seeking vainly to stifle the national liberation movements in Guinea (Bissau), Morzambique and Angola.