Mozambique: Government ratifies defence cooperation agreements
FILE - For illustration purposes only. Screen grab of police arrests in Dondo on 15 Ocotber 2023. [Image: Notícias Moçambique]
The Mozambique police on Monday denied allegations of persecution of the MDM political party in the post-election process but confirmed the arrest of 11 members of that party in Sofala, alleging that they had disturbed public order in the district of Dondo.
“Firstly, the police confirms the arrest of 11 individuals, including members and sympathisers of the MDM party,” said Dércio Chacate, spokesman for the Sofala provincial command of the police, in statements to Lusa.
He explained that these arrests were made after these individuals claimed victory for the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM) in the 11 October elections in that municipality in Sofala province – where the MDM retained its only municipality, Beira – by setting up barricades along public roads, throwing stones and other blunt objects to contest the victory awarded to the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo) list by the electoral bodies.
“Naturally, 11 people were arrested, they are in the Dondo district, and their cases have been legally transferred to the Prosecutor’s Office,” he said, refuting the accusations of the MDM leader, who complained of police harassment of his members.
“It’s not true that the police are persecuting any individual. Those who are detained were detained because of a criminal action they committed (…) Our police are non-partisan,” he said, also rejecting the MDM’s accusation that police officers had vandalised the party’s office in Dondo.
On Saturday, MDM leader Lutero Simango accused the police of persecuting members of the party, the second largest in the opposition, in the aftermath of the local elections, in which it won Beira.
“The political environment here is not good. Our members are being persecuted and arrested,” denounced Lutero Simango, president of the MDM in Beira, shortly after the party was declared the winner of the local elections in that city, capital of Sofala province.
According to the leader, at least 13 members, including the political delegate in the municipality of Dondo, in the same province, have been arrested “unjustly”.
“We have members who are not sleeping in their homes because there is a persecution,” said Simango.
READ: Mozambique Elections: MDM denounces post-election persecution by police – Watch
The MDM leader expressed concern about the situation after the local elections on 11 October, pointing to fraud in the vote count in the city of Dondo, with 24,000 more votes in favour of the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo), and claiming victory based on a parallel count from the notices of each polling station.
“What’s even more serious is that our Dondo district headquarters were raided by the police without any judicial warrant. They raided our headquarters, took a lot of things, and this worries us. We’re doing our due diligence to find out the real reasons for this police action,” he said.
The city of Dondo was the scene of a demonstration on Friday that paralysed traffic for a few hours and closed shops, with demonstrators burning tyres in protest at the election results announced by the official bodies, which led the police to take action.
On Saturday, the Mozambican Bar Association expressed “deep concern” at the “high level of violence” following Wednesday’s local elections, which “reveals a discredit in the institutions that administer the electoral process”.
“The levels of violence, in addition to discrediting any electoral result, can also generate suspicion regarding the integrity of the electoral act itself as a whole and of the institutions that administer it,” said a statement from the Bar Association, signed by its president, Carlos Martins.
In the 2018 local elections, Frelimo won in 44 of the 53 municipalities – 12 more municipalities were created in these elections – and the opposition in only nine: Renamo in eight and the MDM in Beira.
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