Mozambique | Another Mondlane supporter goes missing: Arlindo Chissale incommunicado for nine days
Police claim they use legitimate means to disperse protesters – AIM report
7:00 CAT | 20 Mar 2025
FILE - For illustration purposes only. [File photo: AIM]
A spokesperson for the Mozambican police (PRM) has claimed, in defiance of the evidence, that the police only use legitimate means to disperse crowds during the mass protests that have been taking place in the country, although “unforeseen situations” may occur leading to injuries and deaths.
According to Maputo city police spokesperson Leonel Muchina, who was speaking to reporters on Tuesday, in Maputo, “sometimes the demonstrators, or those proposing to demonstrate, create situations of vandalism and we have legitimate means to react.”
“We also have means of dispersing crowds. These are legitimate means, such as tear gas, and in these circumstances there may be some injuries, in involuntary circumstances”, he said.
However, civil society organizations, including the Human Rights Commission of the Mozambican Bar Association (CDH-OAM), have accused the police of using repression against citizens involved in protests contesting the results of the general elections held last October. The CDH-OAM also accuses the police of murder, torture, and enforced disappearances against supporters on the former presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane.
According to the “Decide” Electoral Platform, the police have shot dead 361 people while 619 others were injured by gunshots since the mass demonstrations began on 21 October throughout the country.
Far from replying solely on non-lethal crowd control methods such as tear gas, the police have often fired into crowds with live ammunition, with the inevitable consequences of deaths and serious injuries.
The latest such death was in the southern municipality of Matola, when a young man was struck by a bullet believed to have been fired by a member of the Rapid Intervention Unit (UIR – the Mozambican riot police). The incident occurred in the area known as Casa Banca on the road between Matola and central Maputo.
A group of youths were celebrating the unofficial “heroes day” declared by former presidential candidate Venancio Mondlane. The real national heroes’ day is on 3rd February, the anniversary of the assassination in 1969 of the founder of the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo), Eduardo Mondlane.
But Mondlane announced that he was unilaterally changing the date to 18 March, and urged all citizens to stay away from work on that day.
According to eye-witnesses cited by the independent newssheet “Mediafax”, at about 11.00 a group of youths were in the Casa Branca area listening to music, supposedly in honour of the national heroes, when they were attacked by the police firing tear gas grenades and live ammunition. The police chased one young man into an adjacent residential area, where he died from a bullet fired to his head.
Another youth who filmed the murder on his cell phone told reporters. “This isn’t a road. It’s a blind alley, and he was shot here”.
A protester said that the group was not on the main road, and was not blocking the traffic. “We weren’t vandalising anything”, he added. “We were just playing music, and cleaning up”.
The police use of live ammunition is a direct challenge to the government and even to the top leadership of the police.
The Minister of Justice, Mateus Saize, declared last week that the use of live ammunition by the Police in order to contain protesters “is not normal”, claiming that the “the government advises the use of rubber bullets and tear gas, not live ammunition.”
Last Friday, the recently appointed general commander of the police, Joaquim Sive, declared that the police should resort to dialogue rather than bullets to disperse crowds of protesters.
Speaking to finalists whe were awarded ranks at the end of a degree course in the police science academy (ACIPLO), on the outskirts of Maputo, Sive called for “balanced measures” from the police, seeking, as far as possible, “mediation and dialogue”.
“Faced with conflict, police agents should act as facilitators of dialogue, as a bridge through which citizens can find consensus”, said Sive. “To this end, they should work closely with the people, undertake activities of public education, and revive the community security councils”.
But the Maputo city police command seems to have paid no attention to these instructions.
Source: AIM
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