Good afternoon. Today gives an example of the double standards in Mozambique’s justice system. Reports have just come in that four people were convicted last week of the murder of a police officer in the city of Nampula in December 2024, during the protests sparked by the disputed results of the elections two months earlier (see below). Police officers and police stations were attacked quite often during this time.
The protests died down about 12 months ago, and yet over 1000 people who were arrested for demonstrating are thought to still be in pre-trial detention, according to the NGO Plataforma Decide. They are contributing to the terrible overcrowding in the prison system, and it is not clear that there is evidence to bring against all of them. And yet they have already spent a year or more in prison, effectively receiving a prison sentence without a trial, let alone a conviction. As we have noted before, imprisoning enemies of the state is a blunt instrument, which is about asserting the authoritarian control of the ruling Frelimo party and not about justice.
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Meanwhile, Wilker Dias, the civil rights activist and leader of Plataforma Decide is to visit the Attorney-General’s Office tomorrow to attend a hearing concerning former interior minister Pascoal Ronda and former police chief Bernardino Rafael. The hearing is to investigate whether to charge them over the unlawful killing of protesters during the demonstrations of 2024-5. Over 300 people were killed in protests during this time, and a subsequent report by the NGO Amnesty International found that the police repeatedly used excessive force, including by firing on protesters without warning and indiscriminately into crowds. In addition, numerous incidents were reported at the time of protesters being shot dead in or near their homes at night, in what were suspected to be targeted killings by the security forces of supposed protest leaders.
