For thirty years he was an international correspondent for The Sunday Times, The Observer and The Independent, working in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the former Soviet Union and the United States. He has also written for several American newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, the New Republic, and The Nation. He is the author and co-author of several books on science and current affairs, including: Perspective on the Middle East War; Perspective on Portugal; the nuclear barons,; Chernobyl, Cornered: Big Tobacco at the Bar of Justice and the best seller Bloody Sunday, Derry. His book on biotech agriculture, food Inc, It was book of the year by the New York Times and the American Library Association. And it was the journalist who, in 1973, caused, through his journalistic work, that the Portuguese troops had committed a massacre that killed thousands in Wiriamu, Mozambique. Peter Pringle, now 82, in an interview with TSF.
Peter Pringle, do you remember the article you wrote about the Wiriamu massacre?
I remember clearly, absolutely.
What made you write about it?
I was working in the office of the Sunday Times. And the news of Wiriamu came from the missionaries who were in Mozambique at the time, and had been picked up by a British priest, Father Hastings. And he brought it to London and gave it to the Daily Times. And they were the first to tell the story. And then of course all the British correspondents left, went to Mozambique, to try to confirm these reports. And the Times correspondent, Michael Knight, Times of London correspondent, was arrested or put under house arrest and told that he had to go and that he couldn’t continue to investigate him; I arrived a little later than him. And in fact I was able to go to the mission in San Pedro, where these Spanish priests had made the denunciations. I talked to them and they introduced me to a 15-year-old boy, António, who had been shot that day but managed to escape, as he was only shot in the shoulder. And so I was able to get some first-hand accounts from him and another survivor and then bring them back to London. Not without some incidents. The local person from the DGS, the PIDE, the Portuguese secret police, did not want me to do the report. So they arrested me and put me under house arrest at the Polana hotel, in Lourenço Marques, now Maputo. But I tried to spread my story. One day I managed to escape from the hotel and went to the city and tried to send it by telex but the telex operator told me that the weather was very bad, which was obviously an excuse not to send it, but I succeeded. The hotel operator sends it and so everything starts to explode from there.
Did you manage to go exactly to the place, Wiriamu?
No. The closest I got was to the mission of São Pedro, which is not far, but no. And of course, when I asked if I could go to Wiriamu, they told me no. ‘There is no such place.’ They even denied the name.
The Portuguese authorities?
Yes.
Let me go back to that moment when you were put under house arrest. Of course there is. There are much worse places to be placed under house arrest than Polana in Maputo…
(Laughter) I totally agree with you. But it was a bit bitter when I tried to get my story out and, in fact, I had even named the guy from the police who questioned me, the guy from the DGS who questioned me. And they didn’t like it at all. So the next day an agent from the PIDE DGS came and told me that he had to go to the headquarters. So they took me to a place in the suburbs somewhere and on the table there were a lot of pictures of, I don’t know, train lines and highways and stuff. And then they said, “You took these photos, because my camera was confiscated when I was arrested. You took these photos, in these places, it’s illegal, you know, you weren’t supposed to do that.” It was obvious they were building a case against me.
And anyway, halfway through the process I said, “That’s not true. This has nothing to do with me. I don’t know what you’re talking about. And in the middle of this questioning, a very tall South African man showed up, I think a agent from BOSS, South Africa’s state security office, sat down next to me and warned me that I was completely on the wrong track, and that I should not believe anything that the priests of the Peter mission had told me, that it was all false, and there was no place called Wiriamu, that everything was false and that he and I went down and continued our conversation, he just went to have a cup of coffee and told me: take the next plane from here to Lisbon and don’t come back
What were the next episodes after returning to London?
I finally returned to London. And I had succeeded, during the initial time that I was imprisoned in Tete, while the local agent was looking at my notebooks and all my things, I managed to put one of the photographic rolls that I had on the table in my pocket, since I was very interested in see all my notes Then I saw that he wasn’t looking, so I took that film and that film, the reel, included a photograph of 15-year-old António and also his gunshot wound. And that became the proof the Sunday Times reporting team needed to piece together the story that the Wiriamu massacre had, in fact, taken place. And then there were some brave and surprising events, like one of the priests who was listening to his shortwave radio that day. I was interviewed by the BBC when the story was published and heard that the story had come to light. And he went looking for António, took him out of the mission and took him and handed him over to the people from FRELIMO who were on the other side of the border, I think in Tanzania. So the United Nations, at the time, had a decolonization committee and they asked me to come to New York to show evidence of what I did. And they ended up making a report concluding that the massacre had occurred. But even then, of course, it was denied in Lisbon. So what has happened in the last few days is quite remarkable.
He refers to what the Portuguese Prime Minister said in Maputo, when he said: “I can only evoke and revere the memory of the victims of the Wiriamu massacre, an inexcusable act, which dishonors our history”…
Right. I mean, I mean, this first official recognition, basically 50 years later.
What importance does this have for the history of a country? I mean, we have cases in other wars… for example, a few years ago, former Serbian president Boris Tadic did more or less the same thing in Srebrenica, Bosnia. Is it really important for a country and a political leader to take these steps?
Well, yes, of course. The question now is, why did she do it at this point? Simple answer, I think it’s, well, here we are 50 years later, and people have forgotten and no one is to blame, etc. But the question arises. Is there a file document or something related to this that exists and can be published? They always said they don’t exist. Was there none or were they lost? Or will there be some new level of discussion between the government and the military at the point where it maybe decides we want to tell the truth about this? And we mean what happened? So here we are in the realm of speculation as to why it happened at this particular time.
Peter is now retired but continues to write. What have you been writing lately?
Well, I’ve done two, three, four, five nonfiction books. I did one on the tobacco industry and then another on the food industry. I like all this kind of scientific stuff. I also wrote a book with a colleague about Bloody Sunday in Derry, Northern Ireland, in 1972. And then I wrote a fiction book, I invented an adventurer, a detective, and I’ve published one of those and now I’m writing a sequel to it. . .
30 years ago I was a correspondent in Moscow. So I ask you how you see Russia’s war in Ukraine…
Oh, I can’t believe what’s happening; it’s a complete disaster. We could assume that something would happen, given the way that Putin was operating and all that, but I never thought that it would actually happen, because it’s crazy and it’s very difficult to understand how the war itself can end and how the suffering of some way. repaired
We are not futurists. But based on your knowledge of Russian politics, how do you think the situation is likely to develop?
I dont even know. You know, if you look at what the military is saying… here in the US they seem to be saying that in the end, the Ukrainians will win. But for how long? And what happens in the meantime? And how will that happen? I mean, we have seen that Russia is not performing as vigorously as we thought it might. But how does it all develop from here? So at this point it’s anyone’s guess, I think.
Source: TSF
