A library belonging to the Portuguese non-governmental organisation Helpo was vandalised on Thursday night, with books looted and burned by demonstrators in Cabo Delgado province, a source from the institution told Lusa on Friday.
‘Yesterday [Thursday] evening, we received information that the Helpo library, which is in the Mahate neighbourhood, one of the outlying districts of the city of Pemba, had been vandalised,’ Helpo’s coordinator in Mozambique, Carlos Almeida, told Lusa.
The building had been vandalised by demonstrators, who broke down the door and smashed glass to loot books that would later be used to fuel the burning of another Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo) building on the outskirts, he said.
‘They decided to vandalise the library, although some of the demonstrators warned them not to destroy it because it was a library and serves education,’ said Carlos Almeida, noting that the total damage or the number of books looted and burnt out of the thousand or so previously available is not yet known.
Helpo said that demonstrations are a constitutional right, but asks that they be peaceful and avoid damaging public and private infrastructure.
The vandalised library was built as part of the Karibu project, an initiative to ‘integrate people displaced’ by the humanitarian crisis in northern Mozambique in the context of extremist attacks, Helpo said.
As part of the organisation’s humanitarian project, Helpo inaugurated six classrooms in Pemba, the capital of Cabo Delgado, in 2022. Three of these classrooms are in the complete primary school of Mahate, and the rest are in the São Carlos Lwanga primary school, both in Bairro de Mahate, where the vandalised library is located.
Since October 2017, the gas-rich province of Cabo Delgado has been facing an armed rebellion with attacks claimed by movements associated with the extremist group Islamic State.
The last major attack took place on 10 and 11 May on the district headquarters of Macomia, with around a hundred insurgents looting the town, causing several deaths and heavy fighting with the Mozambican Defence and Security Forces and Rwandan soldiers, who are supporting Mozambique in the fight against the rebels.
Presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane called for a new week-long phase of electoral protest, which began on Wednesday in ‘all neighbourhoods’ of Mozambique. Traffic was halted from 08:00 to 16:00.
The announcement by Mozambique’s National Electoral Commission (CNE) on 24 October of the results of the 9 October elections, in which it awarded victory to Daniel Chapo, supported by the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo, the party in power since 1975) in the election for President of the Republic, with 70.67% of the votes, triggered popular protests, called by presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane, which have degenerated into violent clashes with the police.
According to the CNE, Mondlane came second with 20.32%, but the latter does not recognise the results, which must still be validated and proclaimed by the Constitutional Council.
Lusa
