Mozambique: European People’s Party calls for urgent debate on armed attacks

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Mozambique: European People’s Party calls for urgent debate on armed attacks

2:01 CAT | 18 Nov 2020

File photo: Lusa

The European People’s Party (EPP), which Portugal’s Social Democratic Party (PSD) and CDS-People’s Party (CDS-PP) belong to, has called for an urgent debate on armed attacks in northern Mozambique to be scheduled for the next plenary session of the European Parliament (EP).

“What I expect [from the plenary session] is a lot of pressure, (…) is to put pressure on the EU to act urgently” in Mozambique, the head of the PSD delegation in Brussels, Paulo Rangel, said in a statement to Lusa on Tuesday.

Pointing out that reports emerging from northern Mozambique are “shuddering”, Rangel said there was a need to alert European public opinion to the absolute urgency in the north of the country and create European awareness of the urgency of humanitarian intervention.

He also said that the debate should be scheduled to institutionalise the EU intervention needed to help Mozambique fight a global phenomenon.

He said that a rich block of countries like the EU has – despite its resources, financial and technological difficulties in fighting a global phenomenon like terrorism, so a poor country like Mozambique, with long borders, has greater difficulty, said Nuno Melo.

He also stressed that the EU should be present in Mozambique because of a political issue which is that the Commonwealth is supplanting the EU’s own intervention in the region because it has understood the geopolitical significance of the presence in the region.

“What would be supposed is that, because of Mozambique’s historical connection to a country that is a member of the EU, the EU would be actively taking the initiative on the ground, rather than the Commonwealth but the fact is that the Commonwealth has strategically sensed, beyond the humanitarian issue, the geopolitical significance of the presence in Mozambique,” Nuno Melo said.

The choice of issues to be scheduled for the next plenary session – which will take place next week – will be discussed tomorrow during the meeting between leaders of European political families.

Rangel said that if the debate was not scheduled for the plenary session – as there was already a debate in September where the EP adopted a joint position – the EPP proposed scheduling a hearing session in the EP’s Foreign Affairs Committee which, according to Rangel, could be very advantageous.

The only debate on the situation in Mozambique in the European Parliament took place on 17 September, when a resolution – drafted by Paulo Rangel among others – was adopted regretting that despite the brutality and terrible loss of lives, the situation in Cabo Delgado had not attracted international attention.

Rangel aid that the debate at the time had had great virtue.

“The international press, at least in Brussels, has followed this dossier, something that had not happened until then,” said Paulo Rangel.

The province of Cabo Delgado, in the north of Mozambique, has been the target of attacks for three years by armed groups, some claimed by the jihadist Islamic state, but whose origin remains under debate, causing a humanitarian crisis with around 2,000 deaths and 435,000 internally displaced persons.

Source: Lusa