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Mozambique: Renamo Claims Its Members Assaulted in Chemba
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Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
OPINION
8 December 2007
Posted to the web 10 December 2007
Maputo
Mozambique's former rebel movement Renamo has claimed that two of its members were tied up and beaten on the orders of Jorge Daul, administrator of Chemba district in the central province of Sofala - but Daul flatly rejects the accusation.
According to a report in the Beira daily paper "Diario de Mocambique", the Renamo Sofala provincial political delegate, Fernando Mbararano, presented to the press a Renamo member, Simao Jo, who claimed the administrator ordered him and his companion, Novas Djofrisse, to be beaten for hoisting a Renamo flag on 29 October.
The delay in publicising this was explained on the grounds that the incident only became known to the Renamo provincial office in early December.
Mbararano said that Jo and Djofrisse hoisted the flag preparatory to a meeting with other Chemba members of Renamo. But they were immediately set upon, tied up and beaten.
"This isn't the first time that Renamo members have been beaten in Chemba", he said. "The local administrator doesn't want to see the opposition in the district".
Jo claimed the political situation in Chemba is "critical" because of the supposed harassment that Renamo members face.
But in detail Jo's story does not corroborate Mbararano's claim.
Jo admitted that the person who ordered the beating was the local community leader, regulo (chief) Calamo. Daul was not present, but Jo claimed that everything done by the regulo was on the instructions of the administrator.
After the beating, the two Renamo members were taken to an undoubted state authority, the Criminal Investigation Police (PIC) - who immediately ordered their release.
"The commander asked why we were tied up", said Jo. "They replied it was because of the flag. So he immediately ordered us to be set free because it is a crime to tie someone up without good cause".
This story shows, not state persecution of Renamo, but a freelance act by a local chief, which was immediately corrected by the state authorities, in the shape of the police.
And Jo's story may not be the whole truth. Daul told "Diario de Mocambique" that the information he had received was that Jo and his companion had physically assaulted regulo Calamo. To defend himself, "the chief took the measures he thought appropriate, and the case was channelled to the relevant authorities for investigation".
"Renamo was always opposed to this government in Chemba", he said. "For two years we have been receiving complaints from members of that party. Their objective is to besmirch our image so that the district leaders are removed".
But Daul did confirm that there is a norm in force in Chemba town which says that political party flags must be placed at least 500 metres from the road. "We cannot put flags in the public highway, in order to safeguard public safety", he claimed. "So that's what the town by-laws say and it's not news for anyone".
An order that flags can only be flown half a kilometre from the nearest road is, to all intents and purposes, a ban on political party flags. And a mere by-law in a town which does not even have municipal status cannot overrule the constitution and the legislation on political parties.
The Minister of State Administration, Lucas Chomera, certainly does not share Daul's belief that flags must be kept 500 metres from roads. He is currently trying to overturn a similar attack on party flags by the Beira City Council - only in this case it is a Renamo-run Council confiscating flags that mostly belong to Frelimo and to the country's third largest party, the PDD (Party for Peace, Democracy and Development).
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When AIM asked Chomera about the Beira flags, he declared it was the democratic right of citizens to fly the flags of the parties they support.
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| Copyright © 2007 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. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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