15 February 2005
Maputo — The Mozambican police in the northern city of Nampula have acknowledged wrongful behaviour in their violent dispersal of a peaceful demonstration by students of a community school on 8 February, reports Tuesday's issue of the Maputo daily "Noticias".
The students were demonstrating in protest against the delay by the management of the school in publishing the results of last year's exams, which makes it difficult for them to plan for the school year ahead. The students have been waiting for the results for the last three months.
Although the students had notified the education authorities of their intention to demonstrate, and although they were doing nothing more dangerous than chanting and banging on tin cans, members of the riot police attacked them with batons and rifle butts.
These ugly scenes were caught on camera and broadcast by Mozambican Television (TVM).
The police have now apologised for the use of force, describing their men's behaviour as "over-zealous". The local police command has promised to find out who gave the orders for the violent attack.
A press release issued over the weekend acknowledges that the riot police acted wrongly by using force against a peaceful demonstration of unarmed students, within the school premises.
The same document says that the Interior Ministry and the Police general command are committed to correcting the mistake and ensuring that nothing similar happens in the future.
The Nampula delegate of the Mozambican Human Rights League (LDH), the School's Parents Commission, and the Provincial Directorate of Education all strongly denounced the use of force against the students, and demanded a full investigation of the incident.
A somewhat similar situation occurred in Maputo, on 22 January, when the police used violence against journalists in an attempt to prevent them covering the arrival of convicted assassin Anibal dos Santos Junior (Anibalzinho), the man who led the death squad that murdered the country's top investigative reporter, Carlos Cardoso, in November 2000.
Anibalzinho was deported from Canada, where he had sought asylum after escaping from the maximum security jail in Maputo in May 2004.
Following the outcry that this caused, the police issued a half-hearted apology to the journalists and promised to see to it that this sort of clash would not happen again.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2005 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
