Over 40 Killed By Police In Post-Election Protests In Mozambique
Over 40 people have been killed by police in post-election protests in Mozambique, since October 2024, reported some media on November 16, 2024.
According to the reports, the protests began after announcement of provisional results of the country general elections that were held on October 9, 2024. The results showed that the ruling FRELIMO party won the election. However, the main opposition party there reportedly disputed the results, saying the elections were rigged, and that it was the one that won the elections. As such, the leader of the party called for weeks of peaceful and noisy protests against the announced results. Final results of the general elections will be announced by the end of December 2024, say the reports.
FRELIMO party has ruled the politically fragmented Southern African nation since it attained independence from Portugal in June 25, 1975. After independence, it was calm and peace for just 2 years. In 1977 the country plunged into a lengthy 16-year bloody civil war entailing the communist Marxist oriented FRELIMO government and insurgent forces of the then anti-communist political group called RENAMO supported by some other similar smaller groups. The civil war ended after the warring parties came to some sort of peace deal in 1992, that included the adoption of multipartyism in Mozambique.
Later in 2017, a civil war, albeit of a smaller scale, erupted again after some Islamist-led armed rebels emerged and flourished in the natural resource rich northern province of Cabo Delgado. The rebels that are said to have exploited the country's massive non-inclusiveness in distribution of wealth accruing from extracted natural resources as well as chronic corruption in the public sector, to attract support from some local populace, have been making extraction of natural resources that include natural gas in the area by foreign firms, almost impossible.
Because of the above precarious political and security circumstances, Mozambique remains one of the most impoverished nations in the world with a meagre GDP per capita of only US$608 as of 2023 by the World Bank, despite having abundant natural assets.
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