Mozambique: Nyusi pays homage to martyrs of Inhaminga – AIM report

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Mozambique: Nyusi pays homage to martyrs of Inhaminga – AIM report

9:13 CAT | 24 Sep 2019

Photo: Presidente Filipe Nyusi, @NyusiConfioemti / Facebook

Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi on Monday inaugurated a monument to pay tribute to the victims of the massacre at Inhaminga, which took place 45 years ago in Cheringoma district, in the central province of Sofala.

This act, he said, honoured the promise he had made when he was sworn in as President in January 2015, that he would glorify the work “of the martyrs who gave their blood for the liberation of Mozambique and its people”.

There was no single atrocity at Inhaminga, but rather a series of killings carried out by the Portuguese armed forces, by the political police, the PIDE, and by other colonial authorities in late 1973 and early 1974, only coming to an end when the colonial-fascist regime in Lisbon was overthrown on 25 April 1974.

The lowest estimate for the number of victims is 500 and the highest 3,000. Some of them were brutally tortured and incarcerated in an underground jail, before they were murdered and buried in unmarked graves.

These war crimes were the colonial regime’s panic stricken response to the advance of the liberation movement, Frelimo, in the central province of Manica and Sofala, where its guerrilla forces were striking at the railways from Beira to what was then Southern Rhodesia and to Malawi.

Speaking after unveiling the monument, Nyusi stressed the heroism of the victims and said the barbaric treatment they suffered “should be known by the Mozambican people of all generations”.

The torture and killings did not have the effect the fascist regime hoped for, he said. “This heinous episode was not enough to put the brakes on our developing struggle, because the desire to free the land and its people remained strong among Mozambicans”, he added.

The people did not submit in the face of the carnage perpetrated by the colonial regime, but continued the struggle until Mozambique won its independence. Mozambicans remained firm, said the President, “focused and determined to achieve independence”.

“This determination is worthy of recognition and inspiration”, stressed Nyusi, and so “we have come to ensure that the courage of our fellow countrymen in Inhaminga lives on forever with the building of this monument”.

Source: AIM