Mozambique: Businesspeople want foreign help to stop kidnappings

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Mozambique: Businesspeople want foreign help to stop kidnappings

8:18 CAT | 01 Feb 2024

The CTA’s board of directors and representatives of the organisation’s member associations, during the meeting held in Maputo, on Wednesday, January 31, seeking solutions to combat kidnappings. [Photo: CTA]

Mozambique’s Confederation of Economic Associations (CTA), the country’s largest employers’ organisation, on Wednesday called on the government to resort to international cooperation to combat kidnappings, claiming that “the police have not been able” to stop them.

“When we talk about help, we really think about international cooperation, bearing in mind that other countries have experienced this kind of situation and have already worked on it,” said Zuneid Calumia, spokesperson for the meeting held yesterday between the CTA’s board of directors and representatives of the organisation’s member associations, at a press conference in Maputo.

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“What we have noticed is that, in fact, there is a poor response to this problem” on the part of the authorities, said Calumia.

He pointed to the alleged inaction of members of the police who were close to the scene of an attempted kidnapping of a furniture shop manager on the 16th in Maputo, which was only foiled with the intervention of local people, as proof of the authorities’ inability to stop this type of crime.

“At times, the public was better [at preventing kidnappings] than the police themselves,” who were “just a few metres away” from the crime scene, stressed Zuneid Calumia.

Calumia emphasised that many businesspeople are leaving the country and disinvesting because of crime.

He added that many businesspeople have called for a halt to economic activities in solidarity with the kidnap victims, but the CTA insists on dialogue with the government in order to identify and implement solutions to the problem.

Adelino Buque, also a spokesperson for Wednesday’s meeting, criticised the frequent references to the race of kidnap victims, such as “businessman of Indian or Asian origin”, considering this type of description to be discriminatory.

“This fact in itself means serious discrimination, that kidnappings only happen to Indians, in other words, that this kidnapping has nothing to do with the majority of society,” said Buque, calling on the police and the media to stop referring to victims by “race or skin colour”.

He called on the executive to put in place the anti-kidnapping brigade, whose formation was announced in 2023 by the authorities, emphasising that “kidnappings have been going on for 12 years” in Mozambique.

“When a businessman leaves the country, it means that his investment also leaves the country,” emphasised Adelino Buque.

Buque said that the CTA’s security department is working on a plan to combat kidnappings, which it will propose to the government.

On Monday, the Mozambican police announced the detention of two men for their alleged involvement in the kidnapping of a businessman on 20 January in downtown Maputo, but said that the victim was “still in captivity”.

The spokesman for Mozambique’s National Criminal Investigation Service (Sernic), Hilário Lole, told a press conference that the two men were also involved in the attempted kidnapping of a furniture shop manager, which took place on 16 January in the Mozambican capital.

“There is very strong information about their participation in these last two cases” and they are “individuals who have been wanted, we had search warrants against them,” said Lole.

The two men are also accused of involvement in kidnappings that took place in 2021 and 2023, Lole added.

The businessman kidnapped on the 20th had already been kidnapped in 2011, making him the first known victim of this type of crime in Mozambique.

On the 16th, a furniture shop manager was wounded in the abdomen during a kidnap attempt that was thwarted by people throwing stones at the perpetrators, Maputo police spokesman Leonel Muchina told Lusa at the time.

In November, Mozambique’s Central Office for Combating Organised and Transnational Crime (GCCOT) brought charges against three suspects allegedly involved in the kidnapping and death of a 57-year-old man in December 2022.

One of the defendants is a former member of Sernic and another is an official from a provincial directorate of justice, sentenced to 23 years in prison for involvement in other crimes, including kidnapping, but acquitted at second instance, the GCCOT said in a statement.

Source: Lusa