Video: Protest organizer beaten in Maputo on the day before a march which never took place

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Video: Protest organizer beaten in Maputo on the day before a march which never took place

12:06 CAT | 23 May 2016

Mozmassoko / João Massango after he was attacked on Friday (May 20)

Joao Massango, organizer of the protest march called for last weekend, was attacked on Friday morning by unknown individuals when leaving his house in Matola in what he later described as an attempted kidnapping.

Massango, who is president of the Mozambican Ecology Party, was setting off to give a press conference with the details of the march when three individuals attacked him with an iron bar and tried to force him into a car.

In statements broadcast by the private television channel STV, Massango said three men attacked him with an iron bar and tried to force him into one of the two cars they were using. Displaying the marks of the attack and visibly upset, the party leader said that he managed to escape his attackers and had sought police protection.

Massango, one of the extra-parliamentary civic leaders who had called a protest for Saturday and Sunday in Maputo, said afterwards that it was up to the people to decide whether or not to march in protest against the recently disclosed state-guaranteed debts and the ongoing political and military crisis.

In the end, no march took place.

Maputo City Council last week rejected the application to demonstrate citing errors in the application. Interior Minister Basilio Monteiro also spoke out against the march on public order grounds, and other extra-parliamentary political parties distanced themselves from the march because of doubts about the organizers.

The Labour Party’s Miguel Mabote said that “we can not join a demonstration financed by suspect, external institutions”.

Recently, a heavy police presence deterred another demonstration against government policy in Maputo convened anonymously through social networks.