On Thursday 6 February, the Republic of Mozambique Police (PRM) in Nampula province shot dead seven members of the Naparamas paramilitary group who were trying to invade an administrative post, said the spokesman for the corporation.
Dércio Samuel, quoted by Lusa, explained that the individuals shot were part of a group of 100 people who, armed with blunt instruments, including arrows, were trying to vandalise the Aube administrative post in the Angoche district, more than 170 kilometres from the provincial capital, Nampula.
‘The PRM district command deployed a force to that post in order to prevent these acts from taking place and, when they arrived on the scene, the police were met and confronted with acts of violence. In these clashes, one officer was injured and seven Naparamas were killed,’ said the spokesman for the corporation at a press conference.
According to the official, the group came from the neighbouring district of Larde and were demanding that the thirty measures advocated by former presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane, who is leading the challenge to the election results in Mozambique, be implemented.
‘They also wanted to capture the head of the post in order to kill him, as well as the destruction of public and private infrastructure, claiming that the decisions of their president Venâncio Mondlane had not been complied with,’ he said.
On 21 January, Mondlane, who rejects the results of the 9 October general elections, presented a document that he classified as ‘30 government measures’ for the next 100 days, from what he describes as the ‘Office of the President-Elect’, demanding, among other things, a reduction in the prices of products, suspension of water payments and the setting up of an ‘autonomous court’ to issue ‘sentences against police bodies, alleging the macabre wave of summary executions’ of demonstrators.
The Naparamas are paramilitaries that emerged in the 1980s during the civil war, combining traditional knowledge and mystical elements to fight their enemies, acting as a community.
Historically, the Naparamas classify themselves as a force that organised itself spontaneously for the self-defence of the population in the face of the war at the time and its members undergo initiation rites designed to give them alleged ‘supernatural protection’ which they believe makes them immune, even to bullets.
Since October, Mozambique has been experiencing a climate of strong social unrest, with demonstrations and stoppages first called by Venâncio Mondlane.
Today, small-scale protests are taking place in different parts of the country and, as well as contesting the results, people are complaining about the rising cost of living and other social problems.
Since October, at least 327 people have died, including two dozen minors, and around 750 have been shot during the protests, according to the electoral platform Decide, a non-governmental organisation that monitors electoral processes.
