Maputo, Mozambique — "You must discover and punish those who killed and, above all, those who gave the orders to kill," Mia Couto, often regarded as the foremost of modern Mozambican writers, said Friday in Maputo.

His plea was directed at "the honest and patriotic men in the Mozambican government" during the funeral of murdered journalist Carlos Cardoso in Maputo City Hall.

The Cardoso family had asked Couto to deliver the main funeral speech on their behalf.

"They did not just kill a Mozambican journalist. A good man was murdered, a man who loved his family and his country, and who fought for others, who were poorer than he," Couto began.

"More than a person has died," he added. "A part of the country has died, a part of each and every one of us."

He said "Cardoso was not just a media professional. He discovered another way of communicating. For him journalism was an instrument to create and publicise ideas. Cardoso thus built a journalism of intervention, seeking out alternatives, pointing to solutions."

In Cardoso's journalism "there were no light-minded denunciations, and none of the arrogance of having an opinion without studying (the subject) first."

Cardoso, Couto said, had tried to show "that transparency and honesty were not simply ethical values but were also the most efficient way of governing."

"Transparency and the truth were always his best defence when confronted with threats," he continued. "It was the fact that he was pure and his hands were clean that made him somebody to be feared."

Couto recalled Cardoso's great admiration for the country's first president, Samora Machel, and the longing, shared by both, for a utopia "in which we dreamed to be our own masters, without having to beg from the world crumbs for our survival."

The assassins "have eliminated a man who defended the boundary that separates us from crime, from dirty businesses, from those who sell the country and their consciences," Couto declared. "Cardoso was one of the best of us."

He asked: "How many of us will still have to pay with our lives? After all the Carlos Cardosos who still remain die, what will remain of Mozambique?"

"We now have the feeling that we are being besieged by savagery, by the absence of scruples of those who enrich themselves at the cost of everything and everyone," he said. "Of those who accumulate fortunes through drug running, theft, money laundering and arms trafficking. And they do so frequently under the passive gaze of those who should guarantee order and punish barbarism."

"What country do we want to leave to our children?" Couto asked. "A country that is not viable, a nation governed by fear? Or do we want a nation of peace in which it is worthwhile being just and honest. For if we want this other nation, then something has to change. And change radically."

He admitted that many people "after so many lies and so many betrayals" had given up all hope of change.

"But that is what those who killed Cardoso and are killing our country want," he added. "They want us to abandon our beliefs, and to accept, to conform to, the order of organised crime."

Addressing "those of our rulers who are concerned about our country, the honest and patriotic men in the Mozambican government," Couto urged them: "You cannot let this crime go unpunished. You have to discover and punish those who killed and, above all, those who gave the orders to kill."

Furthermore, he insisted, all the other crimes that have been "buried in endless inquiries" must be solved.

"This death puts the rulers of this country to the test," he said. "They are the ones who must respond with actions, investigating not just this crime, but the other crimes that have been left unpunished. And they must investigate in the same upright manner that Cardoso researched his writings."

"This is not a request to those who govern us," Couto added. "It is a demand posed by their own historical legitimacy."

"The true homage to Carlos Cardoso is not this ceremony," Couto concluede. "It begins later, in how we wage the battle for truth in our day-to-day lives."