Good afternoon. It has been over a week since at least 18 civilians were killed on the island of Rolas in Cabo Delgado province’s Ibo district, in what is alleged to have been an unprovoked attack by Mozambican naval forces. This is the third attack on civilians blamed on naval forces in as many months, and also the bloodiest. And yet, shamefully, there has once again been absolute silence from the central government on the matter.
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Yet again the government has demonstrated that the security forces are not fully accountable to them. The men in uniform (the senior commanders generally are men) will not take orders from, or explain themselves to, mere civilians, and the politicians would rather not try to stand up to them when there is a war on the insurgency to be fought. Only the governor of Cabo Delgado, Valige Tauabo, has acknowledged the reports and promised to look into them (something he did not do with the attacks in August and July, however).
