Mozambique: Victims who lost eyes in police violence seek accountability, €5M in damages – Watch

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Mozambique: Victims who lost eyes in police violence seek accountability, €5M in damages – Watch

7:09 CAT | 04 Jul 2023

Screen grab: Lusa

Two of the victims who lost eyes during violent police repression of the march in honour of Mozambican rapper Azagaia filed a criminal complaint on Friday, demanding the accountability of the police and compensation of five million euros each.

” We are asking for compensation of 350 million meticais [five million euros] each,” Inocêncio Manhique, one of the victims, told Lusa outside the office of the Attorney General, moments after submitting the document.

The amount of compensation, explained Inocêncio Manhique, was based on a famous case involving Josina Machel, daughter of former president Samora Machel and Graça Machel, who lost an eye in a case of domestic violence, and the courts ordered the victim’s former boyfriend to pay about 200 million meticais (almost three million euros).

“I suffered not only in the eye, I also suffered in the jaw area. I suffer every day with headaches,” he stressed.

In addition to Inocencio Manhique, Marcos Amelia, 28, also lost his left eye during police repression on March 18 and today, after the submission of the complaint, he believes that justice will be done.

“Yes, I think we will get it. The Attorney General’s Office itself pronounced on the case and saw that it was an injustice. So, if it was injustice, I think our case is won,” Marcos Amélia told Lusa.

The victim talks about the difficulties he is facing almost three months after the episodes that left him blind in one eye.

“For someone who used to have all eyes and now doesn’t have one it is difficult to describe the situation […] It is devastating because society judges you without even knowing what your story is,” said the young Mozambican.

In addition to demanding compensation, the criminal complaint submitted today asks the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) to identify and hold criminally responsible the officers who fired the tear gas capsules that hit the victims.

“What we want is to understand, before the world, whether or not there is justice in Mozambique. If there is justice, then the PGR will identify the officers and will hold them accountable. If there is no justice, the case that we have just submitted will be shelved,” said the lawyer of the two victims, Elvino Dias.

On 18 March, Mozambican police officers claimed to have “orders from above”, never clarified, to disperse groups that were authorised to hold peaceful marches in various parts of the country in honour of social intervention ‘rapper’ Azagaia, who died of illness nine days earlier.

The police repression, which took place mainly in Maputo, left several people injured, and the organisers of the marches later submitted appeals to the national and foreign authorities to be held responsible for what they described as disproportionate force exercised by that corporation.

The Mozambican president, Filipe Nyusi, announced investigations into the police action in the marches, considering, however, that the authorities had information that there were “infiltrators” who wanted to achieve “other purposes” with the tribute to the ‘rapper’ Azagaia and regretting the disturbances that occurred.

In the annual information on the state of justice in the country, the Attorney General, Beatriz Buchili, said that the public prosecutor’s office had opened criminal cases against officers involved in the clashes of 18 March, but since then there have been no further developments.

Watch the Lusa report.