28 February 2008
Maputo — An angry crowd beat to death a man named Domingos Raimundo, in the central Mozambican city of Chimoio, on Wednesday morning, after he was discovered stealing maize from fields belonging to local residents.
Raimundo is at least the seventh person killed by lynch mobs in Chimoio since Saturday. Many of the city's citizens have lost all faith in the police and courts, and have decided to take the law into their own hands.
On Saturday, a crowd also tried to seize and kill a further 12 criminals held in a Chimoio police station, and this precipitated clashes in which at least 21 people were injured and 98 arrested. The detentions seem to have been indiscriminate, for the police had to release 83 of them for lack of evidence implicating them in the riots.
On Wednesday, a further two thieves only narrowly escaped lynching. They were caught red-handed robbing a house, and, according to a report in Thursday's issue of the Maputo daily "Noticias", only the intervention of members of the local Community Police Council saved their lives.
Criminals in Chimoio seem alarmingly well-organised. According to the independent newsheet "Mediafax", on Wednesday the citizens of the city awoke to find that the gangs had left them a message. Handwritten leaflets were stuck to trees and fences, warning that the lynchings were not a deterrent, and that the thefts would continue.
"This time we shall come into your houses, and we shan't let you live, we shall kill", said one of the leaflets. Some of the leaflets explicitly threatened vengeance for those lunched on Saturday.
Opinions are divided as to whether the leaflets should be taken seriously. A police source dismissed them as the work of "agitators" who just wanted to stir up more disturbances. But some of the citizens who spoke to "Mediafax" reacted with calls to strengthen "people's security" and not to rely on the police.
Meanwhile in Maputo, a young man was saved from being lynched, in the neighbourhood of Matendene on Wednesday. He was accused of attempting to rape a woman, who was returning from a bakery after buying bread.
The group of youths who seized the man, whose name has not been revealed, claimed he confessed to earlier rapes at the same place. His captors tied his hands and feet, draped a tyre round his neck, and were about to set it on fire, when several older residents intervened.
The man was then taken to the police.
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