Mozambique: Dissident guerrilla leader willing to talk with government, but denounces two more kidnappings

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Mozambique: Dissident guerrilla leader willing to talk with government, but denounces two more kidnappings

5:01 CAT | 26 Oct 2020

File photo: Voa Portugues

Nhongo said that on Sunday, the first day of the truce, two members of his group were kidnapped in Gorongosa district, in Sofala, central Mozambique, without further details.

Mariano Nhongo, a dissident from the Mozambican National Resistance guerrilla group (Renamo), told Lusa on Monday that he was willing to “negotiate with the government” a solution to end armed attacks by his group in the centre of the country.

“The Military Junta is willing to negotiate with the government, but only if it is a real negotiation,” he said in a statement by telephone, in reaction to the truce announced on Saturday by the Mozambican President, Filipe Nyusi.

Nhongo asked for prior disclosure of a petition sent a year ago to the government.

“First, release the document, then remove Ossufo (Momade, president of Renamo) as an active interlocutor in communication with the party and, from there, the problem ends Even [if it’s] today, there will no longer be the Military Junta shooting”, he said.

The founder of the self-proclaimed Renamo Military Junta said that he had not yet received an official communication of the truce, but expressed his willingness to create a dialogue corridor with the government if it has a genuine intention of pacifying the country.

Mariano Nhongo said that previous attempts to negotiate had failed due to falsehoods on the part of the government.

“The Military Junta will not enter into false negotiations,” said Nhongo, a former military strategist of Afonso Dhlakama, the historic Renamo leader, who died at Gorongosa in May 2018 due to health complications.

Nhongo said that on Sunday, the first day of the truce, two members of his group were kidnapped in Gorongosa district, in Sofala, central Mozambique, without further details.

Mozambican President, Filipe Nyusi, on Saturday announced a truce in the pursuit of the Defence and Security Forces (FDS) by the Junta.

“We are not going to persecute the Junta for a week precisely to say that we are open, the country is open, I am open” to dialogue, he reiterated.

Nyusi said that the Junta knows how this work is being done so that a “solution” can be found to the problem of Mozambicans killing other Mozambicans.

The Renamo Military Junta is a movement of former dissident guerrillas of Mozambique’s main opposition party that challenges the leader elected at the 2019 congress, Ossufo Momade, and the conditions of demilitarisation, disarmament and reintegration he negotiated with the government.

The group emerged in June 2019 and threatened to take up arms if it was not heard in the demands for the removal of the Renamo leadership and for a renegotiation of the peace agreement that Momade signed in August last year with Nyusi.

Since then it has been the prime suspect in the deaths of some 30 people in attacks on buses, villages and FDS elements in the centre of the country, but at the same time has refused several calls for dialogue, including those sponsored by the United Nations and the European Union, among other partners.

The violence comes at the same time as the country faces a humanitarian crisis in the north, in Cabo Delgado province, where a three-year armed insurgency has already claimed between 1,000 and 2,000 lives and caused 300,000 displaced persons.

Source: Lusa