The Namibian ambassador to Cuba, Samuel Henrik Goagoseb, stated that the only valid strategy for the imperialists when trying to colonize any territory is based on massacring its population, in reference to the events of Cassinga, which occurred in 1978.
Just on May 4 of that year, South African planes early in the morning bombed a camp with more than 3,000 refugees, most of them women, children and the elderly, with the purpose of not enforcing the agreements that could be reached in the organizations internationals for the independence of Namibia.
Those who faced this cruel bombardment were a tactical group of Cuban fighters stationed in Tchamutete, in southern Angola, about 16 kilometers from Cassinga. They fought more with courage than with military technology, and they understood from the first moment that it was an abuse and an injustice.
The proximity of the Cuban armored mats, with their prestige of heroism, made better equipped soldiers succumb. However, 16 brave Cubans were lost in the battle, eight of them from Avila.
More than 600 people died in the camp and the young survivors (many orphans) came on scholarships a few months later.
«Cassinga was a camp to house vulnerable people who fled the brutality of the apartheid regime implemented by South Africa. There was no weaponry and I remember it because I was there. Coincidentally, four days before the attack I had to leave to prepare to study on a scholarship awarded by Cuba,” said the Namibian diplomat, who lost a close friend there.
He said that this strategy of mass extermination was used by German settlers when they reached the nomadic communities of their country and looted the natural wealth of their territories. «The first concentration camps did not emerge in Germany, but in Namibia. In 1902 there were facilities to collectively murder and torture the population,” said the ambassador.
This situation is repeated today with the Palestinians, colonized by Israel, he said, which says a lot about the imperialists, the capitalists and the oligarchy, who put their economic interests above human beings.
«Today our fears are growing because very sophisticated weapons already exist. This warlike mentality generates fear because there is talk of a third world war in which humanity could disappear. “There is no thought about the consequences and that no one will survive,” warns the diplomat.
