Mozambican opposition party MDM says mass grave denial “nonsensical”

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Mozambican opposition party MDM says mass grave denial “nonsensical”

6:18 CAT | 01 Jun 2016

Lusa (File photo)

The MDM, Mozambique’s third-largest political party, said yesterday that claims that there are no mass graves in the centre of the country are nonsensical, going on to condemn the lack of any autopsy on the corpses discovered in the region.

“To deny there are mass graves is nonsense, because anywhere there are more than two bodies is either a common grave or a massacre”, the Democratic Movement of Mozambique press statement sent to Lusa quotes party president Daviz Simango as saying.

The MDM considers that the authorities are undermining the freedom of the press by threatening journalists who report the existence of abandoned bodies in the centre of the country.

“Another monumental lie told was that the bodies had been buried. Eyewitnesses deny this version and say that a bit of earth was thrown over the copses, leaving parts of the bodies uncovered and accessible to vultures and other animals,” the press release reads.

No religious or traditional authority, the statement said, attended the alleged burials.

“We reaffirm that there was no worthy or decent burial. This shows that the Mozambican authorities do not even respect the dead,” said Simango, mayor of Beira, the country’s second largest city.

A week ago, international television network Al-Jazeera visited the location in central Mozambique where the corpses were found abandoned and filmed human remains lying on the surface of the earth nearly a month after they were discovered,

Al-Jazeera’s report showed bodies, including a skull and larvae feasting on human remains, at the site where a month ago a team of journalists including a Lusa correspondent witnessed and documented bodies abandoned under a bridge near the N1 on the border between Gorongosa and Macossa districts.

The area where these bodies were discovered and later documented by Mozambican private television channels is the same where local farmers told Lusa that they had seen a mass grave containing more than a hundred corpses.

The existence of any mass grave in the region, which under tight military occupation especially since the recent allegations of human rights violations, is denied by local and judicial authorities. The Gorongosa region, thought to be the current location of Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama, has been the scene of ongoing clashes between government forces and Renamo’s armed wing.

Helena Taipo, the governor of Sofala province where the Gorongosa district is located, on Monday again denied the existence of a trench, described by peasant farmers in Canda, Gorongosa district, as containing over a hundred bodies.

“This information is unfounded, a pure lie. It has covert objectives that we distance ourselves from completely,” Taipo told parliament’s Committee on Constitutional Affairs, Human Rights and Legality which is in the Sofala capital Beira investigating the case.

The Attorney General of the Republic of Mozambique said in turn last week that it had not found the mass grave reported by farmers to Lusa in late April, but said it would continue to investigate.

Several journalists, who tried to get access to the site but failed due to the strong military presence in the area, found another 15 unburied bodies nearby. Neither the Mozambican National Commission on Human Rights nor international organizations such as the UN have commented further on their attempts to gain access to the site.

Source: Lusa