5 embassies ‘strongly condemn the escalating violence against civilians’
“We strongly condemn the escalating violence against civilians during the post-electoral period in Mozambique. This has included an incident on November 27 in which a vehicle of the Mozambican security forces accelerated toward a gathering of people and brutally struck a person,” declared a very strong joint statement yesterday (27 November) of the embassies of Norway, Canada, Switzerland, the UK, and the US.
Until now the international community has largely remained quiet, so to “strongly condemn” is a major change.
The statement concludes: “We call on the Government of Mozambique to uphold the role of security forces to protect the people of Mozambique and to conduct an investigation into this incident and the other reports of disproportionate use of force in order to ensure accountability, in accordance with the law.”
The incident cited on Wednesday morning occurred when a few protesters just set up a table with a banner and with two people standing on the table. This video https://bit.ly/Moz-El-Blind-EM shows army and police vehicles going around the table and soldiers sometime waving at protestors. Suddenly an army armoured car travelling at very high speed down the centre of Av Eduardo Mondlane ploughs through the table and banner and over a woman and continues away at high speed.
These picture and the video show what happened. The woman, shown on the left of the second picture and on the ground on the right in the third picture, was seriously injured, but survived.
