MOZAMBIQUE: Autopsies, identification and burials for the dead found in Manica demands Human Rights Commission

Mozambique’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) has called for a full investigation into the discovery of bodies scattered in the bush of parts of the central provinces of Manica and Sofala.

Magazine file

This demand follows repeated denials by the Sofala provincial and Gorongosa district authorities that there is any mass grave in Gorongosa.

The story, first published by the Portuguese news agency Lusa, was that a group of peasants had found the mass grave near an illegal, but abandoned gold mine. The grave was said to be in Canda administrative post, about 76 kilometres from the district capital, Gorongosa town.

A statement issued a week ago by the district administrator, Manuel Jamaca, says the authorities investigated the story – and found nothing. He described the story as “disinformation”.

A photo appeared on Facebook purporting to be of the Gorongosa mass grave – but the photo was fraudulent. It turned out that the photo was taken in the Philippines more than four years ago, and shows the victims of floods in that country being placed in a common grave. The photo appeared in the Portuguese press in December 2011.

But shortly after Jamaca’s denial, genuine photos of bodies appeared. These were taken by a Mozambican journalist who strings for Lusa and for the Mozambican weekly “Savana”. The bodies were said to be a few hundred metres from the site of the supposed mass grave.

The same bodies were filmed two days ago by the independent television station, STV, which counted 13 of them. Nine of the bodies were lying under a bridge over the Piro river. The other four bodies were a few metres from the bridge, near a field. This is not in Gorongosa, but in the neighbouring district of Macossa, in Manica province.

Jamaca admitted that these bodies existed, but he declined to accompany reporters back to the site, on the grounds that Macossa is not part of Sofala province, and he would need to inform the Manica provincial governor before crossing into Manica. But he believed the victims did not die at the bridge but were killed elsewhere and their bodies later dumped.

Jamaca continued to insist that there was no mass grave in Gorongosa, and he was seconded by the “regulo” (traditional chief) of Canda.

So far nobody knows who the victims in Macossa are, or who killed them. Nor is it clear if they were all killed at the same time.

The CNDH, in a Thursday release, pointed out that this is not the first discovery in central Mozambique of the bodies of citizens who had met a violent end. In March some of the media had reported the discovery of seven bodies in the Manica districts of Gondola and Sussundenga.

All these cases, the CNDH points out, “represent serious violations of human rights”. The Commission “regards it as a serious matter for concern that there are bodies scattered around the bush, and visible from the public highway, about which there is no explanation”.

The release urged the authorities to collect the bodies and take them to a morgue where autopsies could be held. Attempts should be made to identify the bodies, and deliver them to their relatives so that they could be given a decent funeral.

The CNDH urged the government “to create the necessary conditions so that a serious, independent and transparent investigation”. The relevant national or international bodies should be given “unconditional access” to the sites where the bodies had been found.

The video  from STV news on May 4 2016 shows how the STV team of journalists – against repeated warning by Gorongosa’s administrator – did cross a bridge without ‘informing’ the Manica governor that they were going to ‘investigate’ in Manica province. It was on the other side of that bridge, in Macossa, Manica province, that the STV crew found, photographed  and filmed the dead bodies scattered in the woods.

AIM