The human rights body, Amnesty International, has
taken up the case of 18 polling station monitors of a recently formed
Mozambican opposition party, Nova Democracia (ND – New Democracy), who were
arrested in Chokwe district, in the southern province of Gaza, during the count
of the 15 October general and provincial elections.They are accused of using
false credentials to enter the polling stations, although ND insists that the
credentials are authentic.Despite this dispute over the credentials, a judge
immediately validated the arrest, and that evening they were moved from the
police cells in Chokwe, to the neighbouring district of Guija, on the opposite
bank of the Limpopo rover.The 18 have now been moved again, to a prison in the
provincial capital, Xai-Xai. Amnesty says this move was made “without informing
their lawyers or family members”.
“The ongoing arbitrary detention of this group of
election monitors is a travesty. They have spent over a month in overcrowded
cells where they are denied access to lawyers and cut off from their families,
simply for doing their jobs,” said Deprose Muchena, Amnesty International’s
Regional Director for Southern Africa, in a press release from the
organisation.A Mozambican civil society organisation, the Centre for Democracy
and Development (CDD), in a release issued on Friday, said that the 18 were
detained after refusing an “invitation to collaborate” and an offer of 1,000
meticais (about 16 US dollars) by a man wearing civilian clothes, who was
allowed to move freely in and out of Chokwe polling stations.CDD says the 18
are detained “merely for exercising a fundamental right explicitly enshrined in
the Mozambican constitution, namely the right to political participation”.
CDD urged the Attorney-General Beatriz Buchili to
visit Chokwe and Guija districts personally to see for herself what is going
on, and ensure the immediate restoration of legality. It also urged the Higher
Council of the Judicial Magistracy (CSMJ) to open an inquiry into the legality
of the behaviour of the judge who authorised the continued detention of the 18.ND
regards the 18 as political prisoners. It says the prison conditions in Guija
were inhuman, especially for the six women in the group, who were kept in a
small cell without the most basic of hygiene conditions.They had no bathroom,
and CDD says it confirmed from local sources that the women were obliged to use
old newspapers and plastic bags to urinate and defecate.
There were no legal grounds for continued detention,
and indeed the 18 “should not have spent a single night in detention and must
be immediately and unconditionally released,” said Deprose Muchena.”The
Mozambican authorities must open the civic space and stop treating human rights
with contempt.”
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