The Mozambican public prosecutor’s office is demanding €480,000 in compensation for the damage caused by demonstrations in Maputo in recent weeks, in a civil suit against presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane and Podemos, the party that supports him.
According to internal information from the attorney general’s office (PGR), to which Lusa had access on Monday, this lawsuit was filed by the public prosecutor’s representative at the Maputo City Judicial Court (TJCM), but others of this kind are expected in the other provinces.
“Despite warnings and summonses issued by the public prosecutor’s office, the co-defendants [Venâncio Mondlane and Albino Forquilha, leader of Podemos] continued to issue calls and appeals for the mass participation of citizens in the aforementioned protest movements, inciting them to fury and paralysing all activities in the country,” reads the same information.
It adds that “for this reason, there can be no doubt about the civil liability of the defendants, as instigators, insofar as their pronouncements were decisive in bringing about the results now in crisis, especially damage to state assets”.
It also points out that “even while observing the social disorder and the destruction of public and private property, they continued to instigate protest movements and announced more severe acts against the Mozambican state”, demanding in this civil case, in Maputo, that the co-defendants Venâncio Mondlane and the Optimist Party for the Development of Mozambique (Podemos) pay compensation of 32,377,276.46 meticais (€480,000 at current exchange rates).
The attorney general’s office emphasises that “civil liability is based not only on the general principle of prevention and repression of illegal conduct”, but “essentially on a reparative function, in order to protect the property and non-pecuniary interests of the injured parties”.
The public prosecutor’s office had already stated that it was initiating legal proceedings to hold the “moral and material” perpetrators and accomplices of these acts – demonstrations that degenerated into violence, clashes with the police and looting of shops, among other incidents such as the destruction of public equipment – criminally liable, and that it had opened 208 criminal cases investigating “homicide, bodily harm, damage, incitement to collective disobedience, as well as conspiracy to commit a crime against the security of the state and violent alteration of the rule of law”.
At least 25 people died and another 26 were shot between 13 and 17 November in demonstrations contesting the results of Mozambique’s general elections, according to an update from the Decide electoral platform released yesterday.
These deaths and shootings occurred in at least five Mozambican provinces, during the fourth stage of stoppages called by presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane, who is contesting the victory of Daniel Chapo, the candidate supported by the ruling Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo), with 70.67% of the vote, according to the results announced by the National Electoral Commission (CNE).
According to the election monitoring platform, there were also 135 arrests in the country following the protests, most of them in Zambézia, in the centre of the country, with a total of 25 detainees.
Venâncio Mondlane, who came second with 20.32% of the vote, according to the CNE, said he does not recognise the results of the elections, which must still be validated and proclaimed by the Constitutional Council, which has no deadlines for doing so and is still analysing the dispute.
Following protests that brought the country to a standstill on 21, 24 and 25 October, Mondlane once again called on the public to go on a seven-day general strike from 31 October, with nationwide protests and a demonstration in Maputo on 7 November, which caused chaos in the capital, with reports of deaths, barricades, burning tyres and police firing shots and tear gas throughout the day to disperse them.
Source: Lusa
