Cabo Delgado: Police accuse fishermen of joining insurgents

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Cabo Delgado: Police accuse fishermen of joining insurgents

8:28 CAT | 22 Aug 2018

File photo: DW

Police believe that fishermen have been recruited to join the insurgent groups staging attacks in Cabo Delgado. The fishermen deny these accusations and claim that they were only travelling there to go fishing.

Joaquim Sive, the provincial commander of the Police of the Republic of Mozambique (PRM) in Cabo Delgado, says individuals allegedly recruited for fishing in Cabo Delgado were in fact being recruited to join the group of unknown people destabilising the province since October last year.

“Some people entice young people to go to Cabo Delgado for fishing or to undertake other activities in the province, but in fact what they do not know is that they are not going fishing. On arrival, they are sent to other places. They are brought there for other reasons. The intention behind bringing people from Nampula to Cabo Delgado is something else,” Sive said.

Bildergalerie Pemba — *Mocímboa da Praia is one of the villages affected by insurgent violence*

On Sunday, police teams in Cabo Delgado and Nampula went to the village of Geba in Memba district, to escort the fishermen home. According to authorities, they had not committed any crime.

Recruiting attempt?

Commander Joaquim Sive makes it clear that his corporation will not allow criminality acts or disorder in the neighbouring provinces.

“We have to be on our guard, because the people who come here to invite people to go to Cabo Delgado do not do what they say they will. Probably, those who have come here would never return. We have to find out who is recruiting them” Sive said.

Joaquim Sive , Polizeikommandant von Cabo Delegado in Mosambik (DW/S. Lutxeque) — *Joaquim Sive*

For their part, the fishermen deny the police allegations and say they were going to Cabo Delgado to fish. Varera Ceta is one of them.

“We were going fishing, but our vehicle broke down in Pangane [Cabo Delgado region] and the police took us to [the district of] Moeda and returned us to Nampula. We have documents that authorise our fishing activity, which we presented everywhere and which were acknowledged. We were not recruited by anyone,” he said.

This is not the first time that the police have frustrated an alleged attempt to recruit people from Nampula to Cabo Delgado since attacks on civilians began in the province. At the beginning of June this year, police in Nampula detained around 40 national and foreigner citizens who were allegedly travelling to Palma to join the group that has been responsible for terror attacks in Cabo Delgado.

Attacks still involved in mystery

Remote villages in the province of Cabo Delgado have been ransacked since October 2017, causing an undetermined number of dead and displaced persons.

The groups that have attacked the villages have never claimed responsibility or made their intentions known , but investigators suggest that violence is linked to trafficking in heroin, ivory, rubies and wood. The attacks come at a time when the investments of natural gas oil companies in the region are underway, but have not yet affected the enterprises directly.

Source: Deutsche Welle