MDM criticizes parliamentary commission on human rights abuses

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MDM criticizes parliamentary commission on human rights abuses

5:28 CAT | 09 Jun 2016

MMO (File photo)

The MDM has accused the chairman of the parliamentary commission investigating allegations of abuse of human rights at the centre of the country of jumping to conclusions, and believes that the people interviewed were intimidated.

“The Chairman of the Commission on Constitutional and Legal Affairs and Human Rights was hasty when he talked to the media about the findings of the investigation,” Laurinda Cheia, sole representative of the Democratic Movement of Mozambique (MDM) on the commission, told a press conference on Monday.

According to Mozambican newspaper O País, Cheia criticized Edson Macuacua for saying there was no evidence of the existence of a mass grave in the centre of the country when investigations had not yet been concluded.

“The investigations were not yet closed, and the commission should in any case first present its conclusions to the Standing Commission of the National Assembly which mandated the investigations,” Cheia said.

The committee stated at the weekend that the presence of abandoned bodies under a bridge in Manica province constituted a violation of human rights.

“We regret the situation of the 11 bodies under the bridge. They are remains of bones, which is a violation of human rights,” committee chairman Macuacua said after a visit of Members to the site in Macossa district more than a month after the first complaints.

Although the authorities have only visited the site of the eleven bodies under the bridge, there are at least nine other corpses documented by journalists nearby, on the border between the Macossa and Gorongosa districts.

This is the second phase of the investigations after the hearings in Maputo and Beira. On Tuesday last week the commission denied the existence of a mass grave in Canda, Gorongosa district, reported to Lusa by farmers at the end of April.

“The result [of the investigation] allows us to state categorically, unequivocally and definitively that there is no mass grave in Canda,” Macuacua said on Tuesday.

On April 30, journalists from various media organisations including Lusa photographed 15 bodies scattered in the bush on the border between Gorongosa district in Sofala province and Macossa in Manica.

These bodies were later seen by several more Mozambican reporters and the Doha-based Al-Jazeera television channel, which filmed human remains still visible three weeks after they were discovered.

Five more bodies have since been found by a group of journalists from agency France Presse and Deutsche Welle in Macossa, bringing to twenty the number of corpses discovered in the region.

Gorongosa, where Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama is assumed to be living, has been marked by ongoing clashes between Renamo’s armed wing and government forces.

Source: Lusa