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Lara Pawson, author of In The Name of The People: Angola’s Forgotten Massacre, gave a chilling account of a massacre that’s largely forgotten during a talk at the Indiana Memorial Union this week.

Pawson, a former correspondent for the BBC World Service in Africa, wrote about the May 27, 1977, massacre in socialist Angola, when forces loyal to the ruling Marxist MPLA party gunned down anti-government protestors attempting a coup.

There isn’t an official death count, but estimates range from the thousands to the tens of thousands dead, she said. The massacre is seldom spoken of in Angola because the MPLA still rules the country.

“I felt a very strong way to expose myself to the reader in a way that they (the government) had not,” Pawson said.

The massacre is unknown because the Angolan government worked to suppress any record of it having taken place. Details aren’t widely available, so she drew upon her experience working in the region in the ‘90s and 2000s to document what happened. She spoke to eyewitnesses, survivors and perpetrators to uncover what happened.

“I feel to some extent the country also haunts me,” Pawson said.

Pawson said international journalists were complicit in the cover-up of the massacre because they did not challenge the official narrative offered by the government of Angola, that it was a small demonstration with no casualties.

Pawson said that, despite her work, revealing the big picture of Angola’s history remains challenging.

“I believe that the history of Angola tests any kind of writing,” Pawson said.

Marissa Moorman, an associate professor in the Department of History who focuses on Angola, said in an email that she invited Pawson to IU because her work could teach future journalists and historians to dig deeper.

“Pawson’s insistent humanism, anti-racism and profound desire to communicate one-on-one in order to reveal the complexities and contradictions in herself and those she meets pulls against our preference for neat and easy answers,” Moorman said.