Goa (India) - 1969 - Prisoners of War - POWs

[Pedro Mascarenhas]

https://www.rtp.pt/play/p11840/e695229/prisioneiros-de-guerra

Documentary from Portuguese television - RTP Africa - for African viewers, broadcast on 10/01/2026 without filters or censorship. The importance of Portuguese democracy and freedom of expression.

Former Portuguese soldiers imprisoned by the Indian Army on the day of the liberation war on December 19, 1961, recount their grievances, humiliations, and fears experienced in the detention camps.

They, soldiers, sergeants and officers, were received in Lisbon almost 6 months later as traitors and cowards.

Currently, they are elderly, in their 70s and 80s.

The movie features some previously unreleased photos.

[Roland Francis]

Wish there was an English translation.

Roland Francis
416-453-3371

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[Omar Perez]

muito emotivo, obrigado

[Pedro Mascarenhas]

Roland Francis

It is possible that, if RTP Internacional broadcast the same documentary, it has English translation.

The subject revolves around the beginning of the colonial collapse that Salazar suffered in 1961 in India, which subsequently led to the colonial war in Africa with tragic consequences for the Portuguese people, both in terms of loss of human lives and long-term economic backwardness.

The phrases heard from each participant are these:

Salazar was crazy to ask us to fight to the death…They were well settled in Lisbon and we were suffering far away…we became thin…our families in Portugal thought we were all dead…the Indians didn't want to kill us…the Indians advanced quickly…I was amazed by the discipline of the Indian soldiers…after the defeat our generals didn't have the courage to criticize the regime…

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[Roland Francis]

Thanks Pedro, I thought the Indian forces would be much more gracious than they were. After all the captured Portuguese soldiers were not the enemy in a true sense of the word. They were only reluctant defenders of their colonial regime and that too not unduly great at what they did.

Roland Francis
416-453-3371

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[albe...@sapo.pt]

After the liberation of Goa in 1961, the Salazar regime retaliated in Mozambique by detaining around 12,000 Indians, considered "enemy foreigners," interning them in concentration camps and forcing them to renounce their nationality to be released and, often, expelled, losing property, as a form of pressure and retaliation for the loss of Goa.

The day after the liberation of Goa, some Portuguese colonizer from Mozambique went to the area where the Indians lived and destroyed the shop windows of Hindus and even Goan Christians. In schools, students of Indian ethnicity – Gujaratis and Goans – were insulted and assaulted.

RTP has not yet made any documentary about the Indian citizens, Gujaratis and some Shiks, residing in Mozambique. The colonial government confiscated their houses and shops, and it was reported that agents of the PIDE (Salazar's secret police) kept the contents of the shops and houses. Cars and gold passed into their hands.

Even so, I know some Goans who do not criticize the Salazar regime.

Alberto

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