Mozambique’s Higher Council for the Media (CSCS) on Tuesday repudiated “acts of violence against journalists” in Maputo and urged the government and police authorities to give “unequivocal” orders so that “they are not targets of police violence”.
The CSCS “urges the Ministry of the Interior and the General Command of the Police, and other Defence and Security Forces to instruct that media professionals are not targets of police violence in the exercise of their activities and that the unfounded justification of “collateral damage” is not used to embarrass journalists,” the organisation wrote in a statement signed by its president, Rogério Sitoe.
The organisation “repudiated” the acts of violence that took place against journalists this Monday in Maputo during demonstrations called by presidential candidate Venâncio Modlane and the Podemos party, making it clear that “these acts constitute a flagrant violation of the Press Law, which determines the free access and permanence of journalists in public places where it becomes necessary for them to exercise their profession and imposes that they cannot be detained, removed or in any way prevented from carrying out their mission in the place where their presence as information professionals is necessary.”
The Mozambican trade union organisation is “following with great concern the growing wave of political and social violence that is occurring in the country, especially in the city of Maputo, in this crucial phase of the post-election period”, considering it “one of the highest moments in the country’s political life, in which professionals in the field are called upon to report to the public with rigour, exemption, all the facts that occur in any territorial space, at any time”.
In this context, it stresses, “attacks on journalists and the retention or destruction of their work equipment are illegal and constitute authoritarian behaviour by people, groups of people or agents of the state who seek to disrespect press freedom and the right to information acts that undermine the rule of law and the fundamental freedoms enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic of Mozambique”.
The CSCS expressed its solidarity with “the journalists who have been victims of such police actions” and reinforced its appeal to all media professionals working in areas that could be subject to public violence to “present themselves clearly identified”.
The non-governmental organisation (NGO) Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA Mozambique) also issued a statement on Monday in which it announced that it had “recorded that some journalists” who were interviewing presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane were injured when the Mozambican police intervened and “dispersed” them.
MISA Mozambique also stressed that it “recorded, through a report by Portugal’s Public Radio and Television station, RTP3, shots being fired at journalists while they were interviewing presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane at the site of the demonstrations scheduled for [21 October] to demand the election results and the murder of lawyer Elvino Dias and [Paulo Guambe]”, a member of the Povo Otimista para o Desenvolvimento de Moçambique (Podemos) party, in the early hours of the 19th.
It can be seen “from several film clips taken at the scene, a security cordon of riot police approaching the place” where the journalists were interviewing Venâncio Mondlane, “firing shots and tear gas with intensity, interrupting the conversation, dispersing the journalists and creating tension”, the organisation stressed.
On Friday night, Elvino Dias, a lawyer for Venâncio Mondlane, the presidential candidate on 9 September, and Paulo Guambe, a member of Podemos, the party that supports Mondlane, were shot dead in Maputo.
After the double murder, Venâncio Mondlane, who is contesting preliminary election results that do not give him victory, called for peaceful marches in Mozambique, which were dispersed with gunfire and tear gas in Maputo and also in Pemba.
Clashes between police and demonstrators in the centre of Maputo, near the site of the double murder, caused at least 16 injuries, according to a hospital source.
