HRW calls for investigation into dead bodies in Gorongosa, Mozambique

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HRW calls for investigation into dead bodies in Gorongosa, Mozambique

9:42 CAT | 03 May 2016

Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Monday called on the Mozambican authorities to move to where corpses were found and investigate the case, reminding them that when denial is your first reaction it “sows doubts”.

Officials”sow doubts when the first reaction is denying the existence of a problem. The impression that we, as outsiders, get is that, if they deny, it is because they are hiding something,” said the researcher at Human Rights Watch Mozambique.

In a telephone interview with Lusa, Zenaida Machado made an appeal to the Mozambican authorities to “stop talking to the press from district capitals, go to the site and conduct an independent, professional investigation into the origin of those bodies in the woods.”

The activist comments come following a report released on Sunday by Lusa, according to which at least 15 bodies were found scattered in the woods, in the region of Gorongosa, near a mass grave denounced by peasants, in an area heavily guarded by the military.

Mhoje_macossa_photo_jpg — It was near the Macossa crossing in N1 that journalists found and photographed 15 dead bodies naked or with their clothes half removed lying on the bush

The presence of the military does not allow access to the mass grave where, according to peasants, lie over a hundred bodies, but 15 dead bodies can be seen in the vicinity, around the bush and some of them naked, Lusa found on site.

The organization of human rights is monitoring the case, following reports in the field, but Zenaida Machado prefers not to refer to the alleged existence of a mass grave because no journalists or researchers have seen it.

About the news of bodies scattered in the forest, Machado considered them “worrying, very worrying even” and called on the authorities to investigate who are the bodies, why are they scattered in the woods and who left them there.

“We know that the authorities were going to go to the site, but so far, according to the information we receive, none of these authorities got to go there, which is worrying”, further lamented Zenaida Machado, according to whom the Mozambican state “has to give an answer” before such cases.

“You can not have a state that is silent before these situations or limited to denying it, when it has not not yet made it to the site”, said the researcher, recalling that just two days after the alleged discovery of a mass grave with more than one hundred bodies there was an official position of the authorities to dismiss the case.

Mhoje_zenaidamachado_photo_jpg — Zenaida Machado

According to Zenaida Machado, the Government of Mozambique must admit that the country has a vast and complicated territory and that, when there are reports like these, the goal is not to “necessarily ruin or attack the state’s image, but warning of some problems that are happening in places to which they [governments] do not have access.”

She insisted on the need for the Prosecution, the Mozambican authorities and the local government to conduct “a very clear investigation of what happened and why those bodies are in the woods.”

Admitting that the origin of the deaths may be the illegal mining, given the fact that the bodies were discovered near an illegal extraction of gold mine, Zenaida Machado said that it could also mean that the conflict between the government and the military wing of the main opposition party the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo), “is a long past the stage of a conflict between the armed forces and Renamo men as part of a disarmament operation”.

If it is confirmed that the bodies found are of people killed under the military crisis, it is “a conflict that is hitting civilians is killing civilians is leaving civilians scattered around the bush,” she said.

Source: Lusa