Silence surrounding

The Mozambican Association of Women in Legal Careers (AMMCJ) on Monday accused the police of “contempt of Mozambicans” for not giving information about the case of candidate officers allegedly impregnated by instructors during training.

The AMMCJ’s executive director, Eulalia Ofumane, told Lusa that “it seems contemptuous that the General Command of the Police of the Republic of Mozambique has not provided any information about the enquiry that has been opened into a case of great public repercussions such as the one that happened at the Matalane Police Training School.”

Ofumane criticised the direction of the PRM for not explaining the circumstances in which four female trainees allegedly became pregnant by their instructors at that school, in Maputo province, southern Mozambique, according to preliminary enquiries, which began in August 2020.

“After all these months and after public promises of an investigation by the president of Mozambique, the ministry of the interior and the police, there is no public information about what was found, and that is worrying,” she stressed. The lawyer called for transparency concerning the disciplinary and criminal proceedings brought in the wake of the scandal “so that Mozambicans know that the presumed perpetrators have borne the consequences of their actions or were cleared and have their reputations cleared if that was the case. The AMMCJ executive director stressed that transparency in the case is necessary for the Mozambican state to send the country and the world the message that it does not tolerate “undignified treatment based on gender, whenever it occurs.”

“We cannot continue to normalise and naturalise attacks on the dignity of women because this translates an unacceptable cultural backwardness,” she stressed.

Eulália Ofumane criticised the lack of clarification regarding the latest development: a report published three weeks ago by Notícias, the country’s main daily newspaper, quoted the commander-general of the Mozambican Republic Police (PRM), Bernardino Rafael, as saying that instructors suspected in the case had been transferred to other police units. “There must be light concerning the circumstances in which suspect instructors were transferred to other areas of the police if it was because they were innocent that this fact is clarified so that the school no longer has the cloud of doubt that hangs over it,” said the AMMCJ executive secretary. Contacted by Lusa, police spokesman Orlando Modumane limited himself to saying that “transfers of police officers are normal in the institution,” without further explanation. In August 2020, the scandal attracted the attention of the Mozambican president, who considered it a “serious” case that deserved to be “investigated in detail at ministerial level and the general command” of the PRM.

“Some of this behaviour was shared with someone who remained silent, connived and did not speak up. Today, all the blame falls on the school and the state,” he lamented at the time, adding that the institution was monitoring the trainees. The case provoked the indignation of several people, mainly in social media, and several Mozambican civil society organisations have demanded the accountability of the instructors who got the young candidates pregnant. Mozambican activist Graça Machel even called for “a broad and deep repudiation movement against sexual harassment”.