Cabo Delgado: Renamo wants parliamentary commission of inquiry on human rights abuses

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Cabo Delgado: Renamo wants parliamentary commission of inquiry on human rights abuses

1:18 CAT | 02 Oct 2020

FILE - Cabo Delgado province has been the scene of armed attacks for three years. [File photo: DW]

The Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo), the country’s main opposition party, on Thursday submitted to the Assembly of the Republic a proposal to create a commission of inquiry to investigate allegations of human rights violations in Cabo Delgado.

“This is a draft resolution for the creation of a parliamentary commission of inquiry to investigate complaints of human rights violations, especially in Cabo Delgado, but also extending to [the provinces of] Niassa, Sofala and Manica,” said Venâncio Mondlane, speaking for the Renamo parliamentary bench in the Assembly of the Republic.

The document was submitted for the consideration of the Standing Commission of the Assembly of the Republic on Wednesday (09/30) and, according to Mondlane, was the second time that the main opposition party in Mozambique had warned of the need to investigate alleged human rights violation in Cabo Delgado.

“The situation of human rights violations has worsened, and a lot of evidence has become public,” Mondlane told a press conference in Maputo.

Three years of armed attacks

The province of Cabo Delgado has for three years been the scene of armed attacks by groups considered terrorists, attacks which have caused more than a thousand deaths and a humanitarian crisis with 250,000 internally displaced.

Mocímboa: 15 attackers and 4 policemen die in armed clashes – report

Some of the attacks have been claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group, but the real motives behind them remain a matter of debate.

The region is expected, in the coming years, to receive investment worth around US$50 billion (€42.6 billion) in natural gas projects led by US oil major Exxon Mobil and French Total, the latter already overseeing work underway on the ground.

In addition to the armed violence in Cabo Delgado, roads and villages in two provinces in the centre of the country – Manica and Sofala – have been the target of attacks attributed by the authorities to dissident Renamo guerrillas, and which have killed at least 30 people in the region since August last year.

Source: Deutsche Welle