Attacks in Mozambique: “Everything is under control in Palma”

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Attacks in Mozambique: “Everything is under control in Palma”

1:56 CAT | 02 May 2018

DW / David Machimbuko, district administrator of Palma in Cabo Delgado province

In Palma, Cabo Delgado, the work of preventing armed attacks by unknown protagonists goes on, district administrator David Machimbuko asserts. But it is difficult to identify the attackers.

Almost four months after the attacks by an armed gang in the district of Palma, Cabo Delgado province, northern Mozambique, neither the motive for the action not its protagonists have been properly identified. On January 14, the unidentified gang killed five people and injured 12 others, in addition to vandalising around 60 houses and stalls and attacking state buildings.

This lack of resolution has left Palma still on the alert. We talked to district administrator, David Machimbuko about it.

DW Africa: What additional steps has your administration taken to prevent similar attacks in future and neutralise the attackers?

David Machimbuko (DM): We are liaising with the Ministry of Defence and all the forces linked to the Defence and Security Forces, and announced an amnesty in January for anyone involved or a family member involuntarily involved to present him or herself to authorities such as a government official or local leader. We are informing and educating the population, firstly for vigilance and against joining movements they do not know much about, and secondly telling them that even in Saudi Arabia there are Christians who speak Arabic, so that they do not join a movement where someone invents a book and says it is a new Qur’an. This is how people end up joining strange movements and end up regretting it. So we are sharpening surveillance and urging people not to join movements they do not know enough about.

DW Africa: In the case of your district, do you know who the attackers are?

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DM: Actually, it’s difficult to know that. So far, we do not even know the nationality of the attackers. We have only seen people who speak local languages like Kimwani and Kiswahili, and Portuguese, but with a foreign accent, which makes it difficult for us to know who they are. The bottom line is that a war has a flag such as ‘this is what you are fighting against’, and there is a defined target. But where a group says it is fight the government and legality, saying it does not want children to study, and then enter the mosques with their shoes on, we have never seen that. They enter with their shoes on because, in the end, they brought products and white weapons like machetes.

The first attack, in Mocímboa [da Praia] was with machetes, and that is how they stole the weapons they later used to attack the police forces. This all offends us, first of all, because we do not understand why they are fighting against the Government, and now they even fight the community itself, because they go and beat, kidnap and kill defenceless people.

DW Africa: But is everything under control now?

DM: Everything is under control now, and we are working to ensure that people can live in peace, and that others cannot continue the attacks they have been perpetrating day after day whenever they feel like it.

DW Africa: Sir, would you, as administrator and someone who knows the terrain, be able to say unambiguously that the sovereignty of the country is not at stake?

DM: The sovereignty of the country is not at stake and, as someone who knows the terrain, [I can say] that we are working to ensure that there are no problems in the future. We also want the investment to continue in our country, while these [attackers] only want to scare off investors. They are Mozambicans who are at times tempted to join movements to stop investment. You know that our country has certain problems, but starting another problem means having to study what kind of people are we.

DW Africa: Parliament is going to start discussing a terrorism bill soon. Is such a law justified in Mozambique, taking into account those cases that you know better than we do?

DM: If we want to live in peace then we will have to have regulations. And there is a need to introduce laws so that everyone can feel confident that for any crime there is a punishment, A law capable of defending the public and general interest is justified.

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Source: Deutsche Welle