| Wiriyamu Massacre | |
|---|---|
| Location | Wiriyamu, Mozambique |
| Date | 16 December 1972 |
Attack type | shooting |
| Deaths | 400 [1] |
| Injured | Unknown |
| Perpetrators |  Portuguese Army PIDE/DGS |
The Wiriyamu Massacre or Operation Marosca was a massacre of the civilian population of the village of Wiriyamu in Mozambique by Portuguese soldiers in December 1972.
In September 2022, Portuguese prime minister António Costa called it "an unforgivable act that dishonours Portuguese history". [2]
The Portuguese Colonial War broke out in 1961 in response to challenges to Portuguese colonial rule by African independence movements following the success of Democratic Republic of the Congo obtaining independence from Belgium a year earlier. In 1970, FRELIMO guerillas began operating along the Mozambican section of the Zambezi River. The presence of FRELIMO and other anti-colonial revolutionary guerilla organisations sparked intense and widespread panic among settlers. In response, the Portuguese Army initiated in 1971 a series of "cleanup" operations along the Zambezi, from Mucanha to Mucumbura to Inhambinga. These operations involved widespread atrocities and the depopulating of the area to block the advance of guerillas, who relied on support from the local African populace. By 1972, the Portuguese government deployed large amounts of Army units and PIDE/DGS corps to the area, with their behaviour and that of the settler militias becoming increasingly harsh. [3]
On 16 December 1972, the Portuguese 6th company of Mozambique Commandos killed the inhabitants of the village of Wiriyamu, in the district of Tete. Referred to as the 'Wiriyamu Massacre', the soldiers killed between 150 (according to the Red Cross) and 300 (according to a much later investigation by the Portuguese newspaper Expresso based in testimonies from soldiers) villagers accused of sheltering FRELIMO guerrillas.
The action, named "Operation Marosca", was planned at the instigation of PIDE/DGS agents and guided by agent Chico Kachavi, who was later assassinated while an inquiry into the events was being carried out. The soldiers were told by this agent that "the orders were to kill them all", never mind that only civilians, women and children included, were found. [4] All of the victims were civilians.
The massacre was recounted in July 1973 by the British Catholic priest, Father Adrian Hastings, and two other Spanish missionary priests. Later counter-claims have been made in a report of Archbishop of Dar es Salaam Laurean Rugambwa that alleged that the killings were carried out by FRELIMO combatants, not Portuguese forces. [5] In addition, others claimed that the alleged massacres by Portuguese military forces were fabricated to tar the reputation of the Portuguese state abroad. [6] Portuguese journalist Felícia Cabrita reconstructed the Wiriyamu massacre in detail by interviewing both survivors and former members of the Portuguese Army Commandos, the unit that carried out the massacre. Cabrita's report was published in the Portuguese weekly newspaper Expresso and later in a book containing several of the journalist's articles. [7]
Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique, is a country located in southeast Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west, and Eswatini and South Africa to the southwest. The sovereign state is separated from the Comoros, Mayotte and Madagascar by the Mozambique Channel to the east. The capital and largest city is Maputo.
Portuguese Mozambique or Portuguese East Africa were the common terms by which Mozambique was designated during the period in which it was a Portuguese colony. Portuguese Mozambique originally constituted a string of Portuguese possessions along the south-east African coast, and later became a unified colony, which now forms the Republic of Mozambique.
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Eduardo Chivambo Mondlane was the President of the Mozambican Liberation Front (FRELIMO) from 1962, the year that FRELIMO was founded in Tanzania, until his assassination in 1969. Born in Mozambique, he was an anthropologist by profession, and worked as a history and sociology professor at Syracuse University before returning to Mozambique in 1963.
The Portuguese Colonial War, also known in Portugal as the Overseas War or in the former colonies as the War of Liberation, and also known as the Angolan, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambican War of Independence, was a 13-year-long conflict fought between Portugal's military and the emerging nationalist movements in Portugal's African colonies between 1961 and 1974. The Portuguese regime at the time, the Estado Novo, was overthrown by a military coup in 1974, and the change in government brought the conflict to an end. The war was a decisive ideological struggle in Lusophone Africa, surrounding nations, and mainland Portugal.
The Mozambican Civil War was a civil war fought in Mozambique from 1977 to 1992. Like many regional African conflicts during the late twentieth century, the impetus for the Mozambican Civil War included local dynamics exacerbated greatly by the polarizing effects of Cold War politics. The war was fought between Mozambique's ruling Marxist Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO), the anti-communist insurgent forces of the Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO), and a number of smaller factions such as the PRM, UNAMO, COREMO, UNIPOMO, and FUMO.
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The Mozambican War of Independence was an armed conflict between the guerrilla forces of the Mozambique Liberation Front or FRELIMO and Portugal. The war officially started on September 25, 1964, and ended with a ceasefire on September 8, 1974, resulting in a negotiated independence in 1975.
Adrian Hastings was a Roman Catholic priest, historian and author. He wrote a book about the Wiriyamu Massacre during the Mozambican War of Independence and became an influential scholar of Christian history in Africa.
The People's Republic of Mozambique was a socialist state that existed in present-day Mozambique from 1975 to 1990.
Christianity is the largest religion in Mozambique, with substantial minorities of the adherents of traditional faiths and Islam.
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In various theaters of operations in the Portuguese Colonial War arose at the outset the need to create various types of irregular forces to help the Portuguese Armed Forces.
Casimiro Emérito Rosa Teles Jordão Monteiro, also known as Agente Monteiro, was a Portuguese covert operations military intelligence officer and law enforcement officer during the Estado Novo regime. He carried out state-sanctioned bombings and assassinations in Portugal, Mozambique and Goa. His actions were mostly focused against members of independence movements that existed in the Portuguese colonial empire.
Vila Algarve is a residential house in the Mozambican capital Maputo. Built in 1934 and later protected as a listed building, the building housed the Portuguese secret police PIDE/DGS until the end of the Portuguese colonial period in Mozambique. It is located at the intersection of Avenida Mártires da Machava and Avenida Ahmed Sekou Touré.
The Revolutionary Party of Mozambique was an armed rebel group in northern Mozambique during the Mozambican Civil War. Founded by Amos Sumane in 1974 or 1976, the PRM was strongly opposed to Mozambique's FRELIMO government and its communist ideology. The party waged a low-level insurgency in the provinces of Zambezia, Tete and Niassa from 1977. Sumane was captured in 1980 and executed by the Mozambican government in 1981. The PRM's leadership passed to Gimo Phiri under whom the party merged with another rebel group, RENAMO, in 1982.
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