Mozambique Elections: Police fire tear gas in Maputo to disperse marchers who were beginning to gather

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Mozambique Elections: Police fire tear gas in Maputo to disperse marchers who were beginning to gather

10:18 CAT | 21 Oct 2024

Mozambican police officers today launched tear gas to disperse people who were beginning to gather to take part in peaceful marches called by presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane condemning the murder ofElvino Dias and Paulo Guambe, Maputo, Mozambique, 21 October 2024. [Photo: Luisa Nhantumbo/Lusa]

Police in Mozambique on Monday fired tear gas to disperse people who were beginning to gather to take part in the peaceful marches called by presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane in repudiation of the murder of two of is leading supporters.

At 8.20 a.m., about 50 metres from where the gathering began, tear gas was fired to disperse a small group of demonstrators, and the police took two of them away.

Speaking to Lusa at the scene, Armando Morona said that he was hit by the gas and that the authorities did not say anything: “They’re just shooting back and forth”.

“But let them wait for us, we are here, nobody is going to back down,” he added, declaring that the situation in Mozambique is “a disgrace on a world scale, where a lawyer is killed.

“The police are doing this shameless thing, this is yet another repudiation of the election results,” he said.

Maputo woke up today with practically no one on the streets.

On a tour of the Mozambican capital by Lusa, it was possible to see a city with abnormally little traffic for the first day of the working week, few transport services running, although some pedestrian movement and cafés operating.

Some reinforcement of police was also visible, especially in the area planned for the departure of a planned march, the site of Friday’s double murder, and also near the municipal centre.

“This will be the first stage, a peaceful one, in which we will paralyse all public and private activity,” Mondlane, the candidate, announced on Saturday in Maputo, where two supporters were murdered. “We’re going to take to the streets with our placards, we’re going to express our repudiation.”

He said that the strike called for Monday in the public and private sectors, in protest at the preliminary official results of the 9 October elections, which his campaign maintains are fraudulent, was to be maintained and that he and his supporters would now take to the streets. He blamed the country’s Defence and Security Forces (FDS) for the double murder.

Police confirmed to Lusa on Saturday that the car in which Elvino Dias, Mondlane’s lawyer, and Paulo Guambe, a member of Podemos, the party that backed him in the presidential elections, were shot dead, had been “ambushed” on the street.

The crime took place on Avenida Joaquim Chissano, in the centre of the capital, and according to the police, a woman in the back seat of the car was also shot and taken to hospital.

Monday’s march in Maputo is scheduled to leave the scene of the double murder at 10 a.m.

Police had warned, before the double murder that led to the march and strike being called, that they would block any act of violence and public disorder that took place on Monday.

The general elections on 9 October included the seventh presidential elections – for which the current head of state, Filipe Nyusi, who has reached the two-term limit, was no longer standing – at the same time as legislative elections and elections for provincial assemblies and governors.

The National Electoral Commission (CNE) has 15 days to announce the official results, a date that falls on 24 October, after which the Constitutional Council will proclaim the results, after also concluding the analysis of any appeals. There is no deadline set for the latter decision.

Source: Lusa