Human Rights report: Bar Association says summary executions are a reality in Mozambique

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Human Rights report: Bar Association says summary executions are a reality in Mozambique

12:25 CAT | 31 Mar 2017

The Mozambican Bar Association released its first report on human rights this week, saying the human rights situation in Mozambique is deplorable and that summary executions are a reality, a point of view supported by the Mozambican Human Rights League.

The Bar Association report, intended to contribute to a discussion of human rights in Mozambique, addresses a number of issues relating to access to justice, the prison system, arbitrary executions, democracy, the electoral process and the economic, social and cultural rights of citizens.

Vulnerable groups and minorities, freedom of the press, access to information and foreign investment in Mozambique are also highlighted in the report.

The president of the Human Rights Commission of the Mozambican Bar Association, Ivete Espada, said that looking at the issue of access to justice, “it is true that the Constitution of the Republic speaks of access to the courts, but we know that we do not want to just get there and go to court, we want to be handed effective justice”.

Espada also spoke of summary executions, which in her opinion “are a reality in the country. Crimes that take place along the Maputo Ring Road and across the whole country are not solved and the Public Prosecutor ends up just filing away” the resulting cases.

“We have to have effective justice, because dissatisfaction will bring negative consequences along with it. We have to work effectively so that we avoid certain issues,” Espada says.

President of the Mozambican Human Rights League, Alice Mabota, says that, on human rights, “Mozambique is bad because, in the rural areas, executions are a daily occurrence. People are being killed”.

Vala comum na Gorongosa — Gorongosa (file photo)

Mozambican Justice Minister Isaac Chande replies that the government has been working with other organs of the administration of justice “and we have established, above all at the level of the provinces, what we call Legality Committees to look at the issues that afflict the justice sector”.

Source: Voa Português