Mozambique: Public concerned about abductions and disappearances in Vunduzi

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Mozambique: Public concerned about abductions and disappearances in Vunduzi

11:00 CAT | 16 Jun 2016

People living in Vunduzi, in Gorongosa, are accusing the state defence and security forces of being responsible for a spate of kidnappings, disappearances and shootings.

Three weeks ago, in the village of Mucodza, two people over 70 years of age were forced to guide government troops along the mountain range to Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo) bases, and told to indicate who in the village supported the main opposition party.

After two days without finding the alleged Renamo bases, the pair were tortured until they revealed the location. One of them was shot in the arm while trying to escape. Their houses were burnt down.

“They came to take my father and beat him. They came to pick him up again an beat him more and they asked who he was,” says Joaquim, son of one of the victims. “Then they left him here, but returned the next day and shot him when he tried to escape. They [elements of the defence and security forces] stayed here to burn the houses. They also burnt the house of my stepmother and took his phones and threw it into the fire. Back here they gunned down a young man who died immediately. They took his brother, who has not yet returned.”

The same day, two other elders were kidnapped in broad daylight from their homes near the Gorongosa mountains. “They came to take our neighbour, an old gentleman who only went to his plot (machamba). When they reached the gate, they told him to call his daughters and tell them that he had had an accident and was in hospital, seriously injured,” a relative of the victim who wished to remain anonymous related.

The conflict between the government and Renamo has intensified in the last months, particularly in the centre of the country

The victim was forced to give his daughters “a telephone number for the nurse. When they went looking for their father in hospital, they called the number. On the phone, they were told that their father was in the room with no visitors.” Every day the daughters “went there [to hospital], but the number stopped working. Our neighbour is not in the hospital, and he has not come back home. He has disappeared. All of us here in the community, we don’t sleep at home any more, we sleep in the bush.”

Fearing the same kind of attacks, some local residents have decided in recent weeks to leave the villages near the mountain and take refuge in Gorongosa town. But even there people are persecuted and some have even been killed.

“I had a friend named Elton who drove a motorcycle taxi. He was taken one night. We were looking for him at around nine o’clock but couldn’t find him. The next day, we found him dead in the river,” says a motorcycle-taxi driver who also requested anonymity for fear of reprisals.

A parliamentary commission has recently acknowledged the existence of hotbeds of tension and human rights violations in Gorongosa, precisely due to the fact that the area is the epicentre of the military movement.

Mozambican parliamentary committee at work in Sofala. 31-05-2016

Commission chairman Edson Macuacua attributes responsibility for these incidents to Renamo. “We are in a geographic area that is a theatre of Renamo military operations, which then also affect human rights, security, order and tranquillity,” Macuacua said. “We have information ofabductions of local and community leaders by armed Renamo men.”

Although declining to record an interview with DW Africa, Gorongosa administrator Manuel Jamaca acknowledged the tension in his district, and said he had received several complaints from local government officials of Vunduzi, as well as from the public and members of political parties, who blame Renamo armed men for the great instability in the region.

Source: Deutsche Welle