Mozambique Situation in Muidumbe district is “critical” and “very unstable” – Catholic Bishops

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Mozambique Situation in Muidumbe district is “critical” and “very unstable” – Catholic Bishops

7:33 CAT | 13 Nov 2020

Photo. O País

The Episcopal Conference of Mozambique today described the situation in Muidumbe district, Cabo Delgado, from where reports of murders including beheadings emerged a week ago, as “critical” and “very unstable”.

“The perception we have is that it is a very desolate situation, which needs decisive intervention to clarify what is going on. But, first, we have to find a way to accommodate all these [displaced] people,” Bishop of Chimoio João Carlos told a press conference in Maputo.

“It takes courage” to reach some places and some perhaps better-informed witnesses who might clarify “a situation that changes from one moment to the next”, the bishop explained.

“The situation changes. It’s fluid. What you know in the morning is not that you may know in the afternoon. If someone goes there, there are perhaps more events [to be found],” the ‘O País’ quotes Bishop Carlos as saying.

In any case, in view of the humanitarian situation, “solidarity is the priority”.

The humanitarian crisis in the north of the country, with about two thousand deaths and 435,000 displaced, was one of the main themes of the 2nd Annual Ordinary Assembly of the Episcopal Conference of Mozambique in Matola, on the outskirts of the Mozambican capital, this week.

“We had some advisers who came to help us reflect” during the meeting and also [access to] information collected through “some work on the ground”, he said.

Even so, “it is difficult to precisely specify the situations” in Muidumbe district that were reported to the bishops.

Armed rebels, who have been attacking Cabo Delgado since 2017 and with increasing intensity since the beginning of the year, had made a assault on the district, with survivors reporting to Lusa the death of family members and the loss of homes and other property.

Mozambican authorities have yet to comment, but web site Pinnacle News, which presents itself as a network of community communicators, reported a week ago that there were hundreds of beheadings on a football field in the village of Muatide.

Stéphane Dujarric, the spokesperson for the United Nations Secretary-General, told Lusa on Wednesday, without giving precise figures, that he had “information from sources on the ground” considered “reliable” which pointed to a high number of deaths.

On Tuesday night, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said he was “shocked” by the reports of massacres by non-state armed groups in several villages, including reported mass-beheadings and kidnapping of women and children.

The UN Secretary-General also urged the Mozambican authorities “to conduct an investigation into these incidents, and to hold those responsible to account”, while calling “on all parties to the conflict to abide by their obligations under international humanitarian and human rights law.”

Armed violence is causing a humanitarian crisis with about 2,000 deaths and 435,000 people displaced to neighbouring provinces, without enough housing or food – mainly concentrated in the provincial capital, Pemba.

With thousands of internally displaced people, the Episcopal Conference calls on Mozambicans to step up their response to the humanitarian crisis.

“There is an urgent need for intervention to solve the humanitarian issue which is, as I said, dramatic, and which is constantly evolving,” Bishop João Carlos said.

Source: Lusa