Hanlon: Lusa under attack for suggesting 100 bodies when only 20 have been found

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Hanlon: Lusa under attack for suggesting 100 bodies when only 20 have been found

5:28 CAT | 14 Jun 2016

Lusa (File photo)

The Portuguese press agency Lusa is under attack by the government and Frelimo for reporting peasant claims of a mass grave with 100 bodies north of Gorongosa in Sofala. So far, only 20 unburied bodies have been found, in two different locations. Sofala governor Helena Taipo insists there is no mass grave in the province, and has demanded that Lusa be held responsible for “damage to the image of the country”. Some in Frelimo have demanded the expulsion of the Lusa delegate in Maputo, Henrique Botiquilha.

Lusa has refused to reveal the source of its story (confidential sources are protected under Mozambican media law) and local peasants were too frightened to talk to a parliamentary committee of 11 Frelimo MPs and one MDM MP when it visited the area. The commissione is headed by Edson Macuacua, a former Frelimo press spokesman whom even journalists find intimidating.

Neither the media nor the commission was able to go to the area, an abandoned gold mine, cited by the peasants when they talked to the author of the original Lusa story, Mozambican journalist Andre Catueira. But Catueira did discover bodies under a road bridge. They were variously counted as 11, 13 or 15. The police then claimed they had been buried with no autopsy or attempt to identify them, but O Pais later discovered that not all had been buried. Last week the French news agency AFP found nine more bodies, bringing to total to between 20 and 24. The local peasant farmer who owns the field, Donca Sabir, told AFP that he had told the authorities two months previously, but nobody had come to collect the bodies. All the bodies found so far are just across the boundary, in Manica province. (AIM En 31 May, 1, 3, 6 June; O Pais 5 June)

By: Joseph Hanlon

Source: News Reports & Clippings