Julieta Gandra

Julieta Gandra (1917–2007) was a Portuguese doctor who was imprisoned by the Portuguese authorities for supporting Angolan Independence. She was Amnesty International's "Prisoner of Conscience of the Year" in 1964.

Early life Maria Julieta Guimarães Gandra was born in Oliveira de Azeméis near Porto in Portugal on 16 September 1917, to Mário Gandra and Aurora Rocha Guimarães Gandra. She was one of four children. She graduated in Medicine from Lisbon. While at university she met Ernesto Cochat Osório, a native of Angola. The couple married, had a son, Miguel, and in the mid-1940s left Portugal for its colony, Angola.

Angola In Luanda, capital of Angola, Julieta Gandra practiced as a gynaecologist. She had an office in the centre of the city, where she consulted women of the white Portuguese colonial elite, and also attended, for a token fee, Angolan women in a modest office in the poorer areas of the city. Socially, she mixed with many of the Angolan intellectuals who went on to found the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), such as with Agostinho Neto, Lúcio Lara and Paulo Teixeira Jorge. During the 1958 Portuguese presidential campaign, at a rally in support of the opposition leader Humberto Delgado, she addressed, at the beginning of her speech, the "black mothers".

While Gandra was in prison, a 6-month pregnant Portuguese woman went to the offices of the PIDE (International and State Defence Police) and demanded that Gandra be allowed to continue to assist her. The authorities eventually permitted this, allowing her to visit the mother's house for the delivery, accompanied by security guards. When word got out that this had happened other women demanded the same support, as Gandra was effectively the only gynaecologist in Angola at that time. She was thus permitted to leave prison on numerous occasions to assist with births. According to Amnesty International, "it would not be possible to find a better example of a human being who, dedicating herself to peaceful work and never having practised or defended the use of violence, had been subject to the arbitrary brutality of the State for her opinions and convictions". Amnesty International insisted on checking the conditions of her detention and health and put pressure on the Estado Novo government.

After the Carnation Revolution of 25 April 1974 that overthrew the Estado Novo regime, Gandra's home was the location of the first meeting to plan the first anti-colonial demonstration in Lisbon. She was also present at the signing of the Alvor Agreement that granted Angola independence from Portugal. After that, she returned to Angola, accompanied by Fernanda Tomás, to prepare for the National Health Service of an independent Angola. However, a decline in her health, caused by a pulmonary edema, forced her to return to Portugal, in 1977.

Julieta Gandra died on 8 October 2007, at the age of 90.