Children killed in Mozambique election violence: HRW

Johannesburg – Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Monday that Mozambican security forces killed at least 10 children and injured dozens more in post-election violence.

The southern African nation has been rocked by unrest since an October 9 vote won by the ruling Frelimo party in power since independence but contested by the opposition.

Thousands of people have demonstrated across the country in recent weeks in protests brutally suppressed by the police.

One 13-year-old girl was “caught in a crowd of people fleeing tear gas and gunfire… One of the bullets hit her in the neck, and she instantly fell to the ground and died,” HRW said in a statement.

The rights group said it had documented “nine additional cases of children killed and at least 36 other children injured by gunfire during the protests.”

The authorities have not responded to HRW’s claims.

Police have also detained “hundreds of children, in many cases for days, without notifying their families, in violation of international human rights law,” HRW said.

President Filipe Nyusi, who is due to step down in January, condemned an “attempt to install chaos in our country” in a state of the nation address last week.

He said that 19 people had been killed in the recent clashes, five of them from the police force. More than 800 people were injured, including 66 police, he added.

Civil society groups recorded a higher death toll – with more than 67 people killed since the unrest began – and said that an estimated 2,000 others had been detained.

Nyusi, 65, has invited the main opposition leader, Venancio Mondlane, for talks.

Mondlane, who came in second after Frelimo’s Daniel Chapo, 47, but claims to have won, has been organising most of the protests.

He said he would accept the president’s offer as long as the talks were held virtually and legal proceedings against him were dropped.

The 50-year-old is believed to have left the country for fear of arrest or attack but his whereabouts are unknown.