workingclasshistory:

On this day, 3 February 1953, the Batepá massacre took place in São Tomé and Príncipe as Portuguese colonial authorities tried to quell protests of native Creole people, known as forros.
The colony faced labour shortages. Plantation owners relied mostly on contract workers from Cape Verde and Portuguese colonies on the African mainland like Angola and Mozambique, and public works were often undertaken by forced labourers, kidnapped by police.
Forros considered plantation work as slave labour, and refused to do it. So colonial authorities implemented various measures to try to force them into wage labour, like outlawing sales of alcohol that they made, and increasing the poll tax. They also planned to bring 15,000 more people from Cape Verde, and rumours spread that the government planned to seize forros’ land to give to the settlers, and forced them into wage work on the field.
Large protests, mostly by forros, broke out across the colony on February 3. Authorities claimed that they were part of a communist rebellion, and formed militias to crush them.
Over the next few days, security forces and militias killed hundreds of forros. Some were suffocated, others burned to death, and many more beaten, tortured and sentenced to forced labour. Bodies of the victims, the governor reportedly told his subordinates to “Throw this shit into the sea to avoid troubles”.
A subsequent investigation by Portuguese authorities concluded that there was no communist plot, however the governor was still praised and promoted. None of the murderers were prosecuted, but seven forros were convicted of murder for killing two police officers.
The massacre spurred a growth of support for independence, and February 3 is today remembered as the Day of the Martyrs of Liberty, and national holiday.
The Portuguese dictatorship was eventually overthrown by a revolution in 1974. Learn more in our podcast episodes 41-42: https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/e41-42-the-portuguese-revolution/ https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/2201302406721564/?type=3