MAPUTO, Mozambique
The electoral platform Decide, a Mozambican Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), said on Tuesday that at least 47 people were shot during demonstrations to contest the elections in Mozambique last week.
‘Around 47 cases of police
shootings were also recorded, of which 46 were civilians and one a policeman in
the provinces of Maputo, Manica, Tete, Cabo Delgado, Nampula, Zambézia and
Niassa,’ according to a statement updating data on the demonstrations, published
on the electoral platform’s Facebook page.
According to the NGO, between
the 21st and 27th, the period during which the protests took place, at least 11
people died, including five in Nampula, in the north of Mozambique, three in
Manica, in the centre, and another three in Maputo, in the south of the
country.
The electoral platform Decide
also counted 464 cases of illegal detentions during the demonstrations out of
1,105 requests for intervention in different cases received through the
complaint line provided by the organisation.
‘Most [of the arrests] were
reported to the Mozambican Bar Association, which immediately released just
over 250 people accounted for so far in almost all of the country’s provinces,’
says the platform.
Since Monday, demonstrations
have been taking place all over the country, most of them violent, in protest
at the results of the 9 October elections. This follows the call for stoppages
by presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane, who does not accept the results,
which give victory to Daniel Chapo, supported by the ruling Mozambique
Liberation Front (Frelimo).
In addition to Mondlane, the
president of the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo, currently the largest
opposition party), Ossufo Momade, one of the four presidential candidates, said
that he does not recognise the election results announced by the CNE and called
for the vote to be annulled.
Presidential candidate Lutero
Simango, supported by the Democratic Movement of Mozambique (MDM), also
rejected the results, considering that they were ‘forged in the secretariat’,
and promised ‘political and legal action’ to restore the ‘will of the people’.
The Centre for Public
Integrity (CIP), a Mozambican non-governmental organisation that monitors
electoral processes, estimates that ten people died, dozens were injured, and
around 500 were arrested in the context of the protests and clashes during the
strike and demonstrations on Thursday and Friday.
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