FRANCAISComité inter-mouvements auprès des évacués - History
1960-1969
-March-June 1961, Portugal: through the Ecumenical council of Churches and the Universal Federation of Christian Students Associations, the CIMADE monitors the escape of about sixty Portuguese-speaking African students to France through Spain, as they are fighting for independence and are under the surveillance of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar’s police, the PIDE (Polícia Internacional de Defesa do Estado). The governments of Senegal and Congo-Brazzaville supply real fake passports; Jacques Beaumont leads the convoys and is briefly kept under custody by Francisco Franco’s police as they go through the French border in Hendaye; Eduardo Mondlane, the leader of Frelimo (Liberation Front of Mozambique), then a professor in the United States, welcomes the evacuees in France. Among them are most of the leaders of armed movements, then political parties that will take control of Portugal’s African colonies: Joachim Chissano and Manuel Pascoal, respectively President and Prime Minister of Mozambique, Manuel Videira, minister for development in Angola, Pedro Pires Rodrigues, Lopes da Silva and José Arauje, respectively President and ministers of Finance and Justice in Cap-Verde; Carlos Alberto Dias da Graça, Prime Minister of São Tome. Some of them, as Pedro Pires Rodrigues and Lopes da Silva, are registered as deserters as they were doing their military service in colonial troops of the Portuguese army. Once in France, many of them join Portuguese Africa’s guerrillas through Germany and Ghana. Favouring the independence of the colonial world since the beginning of the 1950s, the CIMADE thus starts being involved politically, as clearly shows its will to “get out of Portugal all those who will make Angola’s elite and join the fight for freedom”.
-From 1967, Vietnam: the CIMADE works both in the north and in the south. In 1968, jointly with the CCFD, the LDH, the French Communist Party, the CGT (General Confederation of Workers) and the MRAP (Movement Against Racism and for Friendship among Peoples), it participates in chartering a ship bound for the north. Some will say that this ship brought technical help to the communist fighters in the south.
-23-24 March 1968, France: the CIMADE takes part in a seminar called “Christianism and Revolution”. Father Olivier Maillard, from Frères du Monde, an association created in 1958, supported the independence of Algeria and declares: “The issue is not whether to choose violence, we are forced to do so. The issue is to take responsibility for violent situations”. As it wants to stick to its humanitarian mandate, the CIMADE refuses to sign the final declaration which proclaims “the right for every Christian, as for every man, to take part in a revolutionary process, including armed fighting”. Meanwhile, the CIMADE reviews its Constitution to enlarge its action towards the Third World.
