Mozambique president urges terrorist recruits to defect

MAPUTO, Mozambique

Young Mozambicans recruited by the terrorist groups operating in the northern province of Cabo Delgado will not be harmed if they defect and turn themselves in to the authorities, President Filipe Nyusi pledged on Wednesday.

He was speaking at Maputo’s Monument to the Mozambican Heroes, on Heroes’ Day, which commemorates the assassination of the founder and First President of the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo), Eduardo Mondlane, on 3 February 1969.

He told the ceremony that the country faces a range of “challenges and constraints”, including terrorism in Cabo Delgado, the armed attacks perpetrated by the self-styled “Renamo Military Junta” in the central provinces of Manica and Sofala, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the threats posed by climate change.

He believed that, in Cabo Delgado, teenage recruits to the ranks of the islamist terrorists want to return to their families and communities, but are afraid to do so, because they fear retaliation. But he guaranteed that the defence and security forces have instructions to guarantee their safety and their reinsertion into society.

Nyusi said that those deceived into joining the terrorists “should not hesitate” to defect and come back to their families.

As for the attacks by the Renamo Military Junta, Nyusi described these as “an affront to our desire to live in peace and harmony”. He urged the Junta’s men to lay down their arms and join the Demobilisation, Disarmament and Reintegration (DDR) procedures, which he had agreed with Renamo leader Ossufo Momade, under the peace agreement the two men signed in August 2019.

The government, Nyusi added, takes seriously its responsibility to continue demobilizing and disarming Renamo former guerillas “alongside the Renamo leadership, and with the support of the international community.

The President added that, in recent years, Mozambique has been frequently battered by storms and cyclones resulting from climate change. The latest such event was Cyclone Eloise which struck central Mozambique on 23 January, interrupting the normal operation of health, education, electricity, water and communication services.

The torrential rains and flooding brought by the cyclone had damaged or destroyed thousands of homes, cut key roads, and swamped thousands of hectares of crops.

Nyusi declared that Heroes’ Day “is a solemn occasion for us to remember and celebrate the life and work of those who, at all stages of our history, gave the best of themselves in the resistance and in the victorious struggle against colonial rule”.