UN General Assembly
1961

56. More serious still than the events in the Congo are those which are now steeping Angola in blood. The arguments advanced by the representatives of Portugal from this very rostrum to justify the maintenance by force of their domination over this Territory seem to us to have little foundation; they will not stand up to criticism; they are very often ridiculous. How, for example, can it be argued that Angola is a Portuguese province, when its inhabitants have never had representative institutions and have never participated, by means of universal suffrage, in electoral consultations of any kind? We maintain that Angola, like the other African countries, is entitled to self- determination. We make a solemn appeal to Portugal to end the senseless genocide it has been conducting against the Angolan people. The .desire of the Lisbon Government to perpetuate the colonial system is equally apparent in its other African colonies, particularly in so-called Portuguese Guinea, where nationalists are hunted down and imprisoned if they do not succeed in escaping to neighbouring African States. My country, in common with all the African States, strongly condemns this obsolete colonialism, whose incalculable consequences Portugal fails, to appreciate.