Deported to Portuguese Timor
Deportees in Portuguese Timor ( Portuguese deportados ) made up part of the European population in the Portuguese colony in Southeast Asia alongside soldiers, traders, missionaries and settlers . Governor Manuel de Abreu Ferreira de Carvalho (1940 to 1946) called Portuguese Timor a penal colony , precisely because the Chinese were constantly being banished from Macau to Timor. On the other hand, unwelcome Timorese were also banished to Macau or Goa .
As the most distant possession from the motherland and the other colonies, Portuguese Timor was a popular place for the banishment of criminals and political opponents from an early age. From the early 18th century, prisoners from Portugal and colonies such as Macau and Goa were deported to Timor . Political prisoners also followed from the late 19th century.
After anarchists began bombing, a law was passed in 1892 whereby convicts could be exiled to the Portuguese overseas territories after they had served their sentences. A law followed on February 13, 1896, allowing subsequent deportation for one to three years, with the option of extending the sentence for those who “made public statements and words, in writing or in some way or with the help of others Publication means, provoke, protect, recommend or approve of subversive acts against the public act, even if these acts do not threaten the safety of people or property, as well as professing the doctrine of anarchism and leading to the realization of such acts. ”In this way, anyone could political opposition can be classified as a criminal offense.
As a result of the law, arrested anarchists were deported to the colonies, including Timor. The anarchist João Manuel Rodrigues managed to escape from the ship Africa in Cape Town . Gilberto dos Santos fled but was recaptured and later died of yellow fever . Other anarchists arrived in Portuguese Timor on September 14, 1896. Many of them also died due to the harsh living conditions and tropical diseases such as yellow fever and malaria . José Carvalho and Manuel Coelho Traficante, who were brought from Macau to Timor in 1908 , founded the group "Alvorada da Liberdade" ( German dawn of freedom ) to organize. The survivors were able to return to Portugal in 1911 after the fall of the monarchy. About half a dozen of the anarchists stayed on Timor. They had taken public jobs and started families.
In 1925, after the murder of Ferreira do Amaral, the commander of the civilian police in Lisbon on May 15, new political repression and deportations followed. Manuel Viegas Carrascalão was among the prisoners now deported to Timor . On April 14, 1927, he left Portugal with 63 other convicts on board the Pêro de Alenquer . Some of the deportees have already been disembarked in Portuguese Guinea . Others came on board, so that on September 25, 1927, 75 deportees arrived in Timor, mostly workers or artists who were accused of membership in the Red Legion (Legião Vermelha) . They were detained in Ai Pelo Prison for a while . Governor Teófilo Duarte (1926–1929) lacked instructions on how to deal with the deportees. So he granted them freedom of movement within the colony, basic equipment for living and employment in public administration. Carrascalão became an honorable member of colonial society, whose sons would one day play important roles in independent East Timor . His companion, the painter Arsenio José Filipe, on the other hand, was taken to Atauro , which served as a prison island, three times in the colony . Twice for dynamite fishing and once for a fight with the governor's chauffeur in Suai . In 1931 there were still around 60 deportees from the 1927 group in Portuguese Timor.
Under the Portuguese dictatorship of the Estado Novo from 1927, political opponents were again victims of deportation. So anarchists, anarcho-syndicalists, communists and republicans. Others had revolted in Portuguese Guinea between 1927 and 1931. According to a British source, around 100 deportees were living in Portuguese Timor in the 1920s. About 60 percent of them were Democrats, 30 percent Communists, and the remaining 10 percent simple criminals. Criminals were mainly banished from the other colonies in Portuguese Timor; mostly from Macau, but also from Angola , for example . On June 28, 1931, the Gil Eanes cast off from Lisbon and, with stopovers in Cape Verde , Portuguese Guinea and Angola, brought 90 deportees to Timor, both political prisoners and criminals. On 2 September the same year followed from Belém , the Pedro Gomes with 271 civilians and 87 Abgehörigen of the military who were sent because of their participation in the uprising of August 1931 in exile. The ship took the route across the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal and reached Timor on October 16. Duarte's successors on the governor's post , Cesário Augusto de Almeida Viana (1929–1930) and António Baptista Justo (1930–1933), moved away from these freedoms again, which the newcomers felt. Upon arrival they were interned for weeks or months in camps in Oe-Cusse Ambeno and on Atauro. Those who arrived in the colony between 1927 and 1930 continued to live relatively undisturbed.
The living conditions in the camps were harsh. While Atauro, as a small island in front of the colonial capital Dili , naturally prevented escape, the camp in Oe-Cusse Ambeno was surrounded by a moat and barbed wire and was guarded by soldiers armed with machine guns on a high seat. The camp in Oe-Cusse Ambeno was even described as a concentration camp. The prisoners lived in wooden barracks covered with palm fronds, surrounded by the moisture of rice fields and numerous mosquitoes. There was hardly any medical help or clothing, and the food was horrible and meager. Many inmates died from malaria. On February 28, 1932, a group of prisoners managed to escape from a camp. A deportee and former colonel was only able to inform the colonial ministry about the situation via the Veterans League, after which the government in Lisbon ordered the camps to be closed in February 1932. About 500 deportees were brought to Dili, where they now made up a third of the European population. Even if some of the deportees retired to the mountains for a simple life and others stood out for their criminal acts, a third group of them integrated into the life of the colony, including many former members of the armed forces. Some anarchists, including Arnaldo Simôes Januário from Coimbra , attempted an underground revolution with the Aliança Libertária Revolucionária de Timor . There was also an arson attack on the governor's seat with the aim of assassinating the governor. The movement has also been suspected of supporting unrest among the Timorese people. In 1933 the group was picked up and smashed. The captured members were sent to Atauro and had to work in a quarry there.
On December 5, 1932, there was a general amnesty for the deportees in the colonies. Only 50 people classified as dangerous were excluded: trade unionists , communists, socialists and anarchists from the political opposition and assassins as well as the deportees from 1927. They were not allowed to return to Portugal, while the majority of those deported to Timor on April 27, 1933 left with Mozambique again. Among the returnees was Arnaldo Simôes Januário, who took part in the rebellion against António de Oliveira Salazar on January 18, 1934 and was sent to the Tarrafal concentration camp for it . Simôes Januário died there on March 27, 1938. The returnees Raul Pereira dos Santos took part in the Spanish Revolution of 1936.
In view of the fact that the arrival of the deportees temporarily doubled the European population, the impact of this period should not be underestimated. In 1927 there were 451,604 people in Portuguese Timor (census on December 31, 1927). These included 378 Portuguese (mostly civil servants), eleven other Western foreigners (Australians) and 155 Europeans born in the colonies who were mostly active in administration. There were also about 2,000 Chinese and a few dozen Japanese.
In 1934 there were 105 political deportees in the colony, including eleven on Atauro. They received a small monthly allowance for living expenses. In 1935 the total was 27 patacas . Also António Luís Horta and Francisco Horta (banned in 1936), grandfather and father of the East Timorese politician José Ramos-Horta was exiled for political opposition to Timor. João Gomes Moreira junior was sent to Timor because of his involvement in the independence movement in Angola. 1941 was established as a clerk at the local court.
In order to prevent political actions by the deportees, they were distributed across the entire colony and their freedom of movement was restricted. As a check they had to report to the local authorities every Saturday. It was not until World War II that many of them became active in the Battle of Timor (1942–1945) against the Japanese occupiers and fought as anti-fascists on the side of the Allies. Among them Francisco Horta and Manuel Viegas Carrascalão, who received the Fazenda Algarve in Liquiçá as a reward for his services . Some anarchists from Timor were evacuated to Australia in 1942/43 because of their support from the Allies , where they were interned in Bob's farm . After the end of the war they returned to Timor or Portugal. The anarchist movement in Portuguese Timor ended with that.
Web links
- The story of the Pêro de Alenquer (Portuguese)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Geoffrey C. Gunn: History of Timor. , P. 107ff. ( Memento of the original from March 24, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Technical University of Lisbon (PDF file; 805 kB).
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Vadim Damier and Kirill Limanov: History of Anarchism in Timor Leste , November 16, 2017. , accessed on November 8, 2018.
- ^ A b Portal Anarquista: CRONOLOGIA PROVISÓRIA DE MANUEL VIEGAS CARRASCALÃO (1901-1977) , accessed on September 4, 2016.
- ↑ Sapo: Prisão do Ai Pelo, “preservar a ruína e construir um museu local” , June 4, 2012 , accessed on May 29, 2016
- ↑ a b Madalena Salvação Barreto: Deportação, colonialismo e interações culturais em Timor: o caso dos deportados nas décadas de 20 e 30 do século XX , FCSH-UNL, 2014 , accessed on October 17, 2015.
