Torture by Police, Forced Disappearance & Other Ill Treatment In the early years of the 21st Century, 2000 to
2025 gvnet.com/torture/Mozambique.htm
|
|||||||||||
|
CAUTION: The following links
have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in Mozambique. Some of these links may lead to websites
that present allegations that are unsubstantiated or even false. No
attempt has been made to validate their authenticity or to verify their content. HOW TO USE THIS WEBPAGE Students If you are looking
for material to use in a term-paper, you are advised to scan the postings on
this page and others to see which aspects of Torture by Authorities are of
particular interest to you. You might
be interested in exploring the moral justification for inflicting pain or
inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment in order to obtain critical
information that may save countless lives, or to elicit a confession for a
criminal act, or to punish someone to teach him a lesson outside of the
courtroom. Perhaps your paper might
focus on some of the methods of torture, like fear, extreme temperatures,
starvation, thirst, sleep deprivation, suffocation, or immersion in freezing
water. On the other hand, you might
choose to write about the people acting in an official capacity who
perpetrate such cruelty. There is a
lot to the subject of Torture by Authorities.
Scan other countries as well as this one. Draw comparisons between activity in
adjacent countries and/or regions.
Meanwhile, check out some of the Term-Paper resources
that are available on-line. ***
ARCHIVES *** 2020 Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices: Mozambique U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, 30 March 2021 www.state.gov/reports/2020-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/mozambique/
[accessed 29 July
2021] TORTURE AND OTHER
CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT The constitution
and law prohibit such practices, but international and domestic human rights
groups reported mistreatment of detainees, specifically those detained in
Cabo Delgado Province as a result of counterterrorism operations. At least
two videos surfaced that showed security forces physically abusing terrorist
suspects. For example, in August a video appeared showing alleged government
security force members caning three terrorist suspects; one suspect appeared
to have been caned to death. In September the government stated it had opened
an investigation into the matter. No additional information was available by
year’s end. PRISON AND DETENTION
CENTER CONDITIONS Prison conditions
remained harsh and potentially life threatening in most areas due to gross
overcrowding, inadequate sanitary conditions, and limited medical care. Physical
Conditions: Government officials and civil society organizations cited as
serious problems overcrowding, poor nutrition, poor hygiene and medical care,
the inclusion of juvenile prisoners in adult facilities, and convicted and
untried prisoners sharing cells. Almost all prisons dated from the pre-1975
colonial era, and many were in an advanced state of dilapidation. Freedom House
Country Report 2020 Edition freedomhouse.org/country/mozambique/freedom-world/2020 [accessed 15 May
2020] F2. DOES
DUE PROCESS PREVAIL IN CIVIL AND CRIMINAL MATTERS? Although due process
rights are constitutionally guaranteed, these rights are not always respected
in practice. RENAMO leaders assert that the police arrest members of their
party arbitrarily. Due to resource constraints and an understaffed judiciary,
lengthy pretrial detentions are common. Policing
and Human Rights -- Assessing southern African countries’ compliance with the
SARPCCO Code of Conduct for Police Officials Edited by Amanda Dissel & Cheryl Frank, African Policing Civilian
Oversight Forum APCOF, 2012 ISBN:
978-1-920489-81-6 [accessed 25 March
2014] [MOZAMBIQUE] --
ARTICLE 4: TORTURE AND CRUEL, INHUMAN AND DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT No police official shall, under any circumstances,
inflict, instigate, or tolerate any act of torture and other cruel, inhuman
or degrading treatment or punishment of any person. Despite some legal
safeguards against the use of torture and ill-treatment, international and
domestic observers note that there are numerous and credible reports of
police torture, including torture and ill-treatment that caused the death of
a few detainees, without appropriate accountability measures being taken
against the police responsible. There are concerns
that responses by the criminal justice system to allegations of torture have
been inadequate. During its UPR process, the government received a number of
recommendations to ensure that thorough, prompt and impartial investigations
are carried out in all cases of torture and other ill treatment, and that
perpetrators are brought to justice. Equally, there are
concerns that torture victims seldom receive civil law remedies. According to
civil society organisations, over the past ten
years only two out of 50 cases of compensation for torture and other
ill-treatment have resulted in compensation. Mozambique: Violent
police assume ‘licence to kill’ Amnesty
International AI, 29 April 2008 [accessed 8 January
2019] In a report
published today, Amnesty International revealed the extent of police violence
in Mozambique, saying that police are killing and torturing people with near
total impunity. “Police in Mozambique seem to think they have a licence to kill and the weak police accountability system
allows for this,” said Michelle Kagari, Deputy
Director of Amnesty International’s Africa Programme.
“In almost all cases of human rights violations by police – including
unlawful killings – no investigation into the case and no disciplinary action
against those responsible has been undertaken, nor
has any police officer been prosecuted.” On 14 August 2007,
police grabbed Abrantes Afonso
Penicela from his home and pushed him into a car. Abrantes said that the officers gave him a toxic
injection and drove him to a secluded area where they beat him until he lost
consciousness. The police then shot him in the back of the neck and set him
on fire, leaving him for dead. Abrantes somehow
survived the attack and managed to crawl to a nearby road where he was found
and taken to hospital. He managed to tell his family and police what had
happened to him, but died of his injuries later that night. No police officer
has been arrested for his killing AMNESTY
INTERNATIONAL From an old article -- URL not available Article was
published sometime prior to 2015 BACKGROUND Scores of people, mainly
elderly, were killed after being accused of witchcraft. The highest reported
incidence of such killings occurred in the southern province of Inhambane where at least 20 elderly people were killed
between August and September. TORTURE AND OTHER
ILL-TREATMENT There were
continued reports of torture and other ill-treatment of prisoners, including
after attempted escapes. On 24 September,
two prisoners died from their injuries at the Quinta do Girassol
detention centre in Zambezia
province after being beaten by a prison guard with sticks, stones and bricks.
The prisoners had apparently been recaptured while trying to escape. Search … AMNESTY
INTERNATIONAL For more
articles:: Search Amnesty
International’s website www.amnesty.org/en/search/?q=mozambique+torture&ref=&year=&lang=en&adv=1&sort=relevance [accessed 8 January 2019] Scroll
Down ***
EARLIER EDITIONS OF SOME OF THE ABOVE *** Human Rights
Reports » 2004 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41617.htm [accessed 6 February
2013] 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41617.htm [accessed 7 July
2019] TORTURE
AND OTHER CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT – The Constitution
expressly prohibits such practices; however, police continued to commit
serious abuses, and torture, beatings, death threats, physical and mental
abuse, and extortion remained problems. During the year, human rights
advocates reported complaints of torture, including several instances
involving the sexual abuse of women, beating, illegal detention, and death
threats. Freedom House
Country Report - Political Rights: 3 Civil
Liberties: 3 Status: Partly Free 2009 Edition www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2009/mozambique [accessed 6 February
2013] LONG
URL ç 2009 Country Reports begin on Page 21 [accessed 13 May
2020] The judicial system
has improved since the end of one-party rule in 1994, but judicial
independence is still elusive. Corruption continues to be endemic in the
judicial system, and the country faces a dire shortage of judges. Former justice
minister, Esperanca Machavela,
before being dismissed by Guebuza in March 2008, streamlined judicial
operations that had previously been divided between the justice and interior
ministries. She managed to reduce the backlog of cases, speeding up trial and
sentencing procedures and significantly reducing the number of individuals
held improperly in pretrial detention. An independent 2008 study conducted by
the country’s preeminent human rights organization, the Mozambican Human
Rights League, found that the number of suspects who remained in prison
illegally past their preventive detention deadline (usually a maximum of 48
hours for most crimes) had dropped from 219 in 2007 to just 4 in 2008 in the
south of the country. Improvements, though less dramatic, were also seen in
the north and central regions where the numbers of suspects in illegal
pretrial detention fell from 119 to 40 and from 61 to 15, respectively. The
study also found that while the treatment of inmates had improved and there
was no evidence of torture in prisons, living conditions are still abysmal
and most cells are overcrowded. Human rights abuses
by security forces—including extrajudicial killings, torture of suspects, and
arbitrary detention—remain serious problems despite pay increases and human
rights training. Public dissatisfaction with the police has led to a rise in
vigilante groups. A 2007 Amnesty International study found that there had
been an increase in the number of extrajudicial killings of suspected
criminals by police, and that few of the cases were ever investigated or
followed up with prosecution of accused officers. Nonetheless, the lack of
torture in prisons—a result of an improvement in prison-guard training—serves
as a potential model for similar improvements among the police. All
material used herein reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107
for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use. PLEASE RESPECT COPYRIGHTS OF COMPONENT
ARTICLES. Cite this
webpage as: Patt, Prof. Martin, "Torture by Police, Forced Disappearance
& Other Ill Treatment in the early years of the 21st Century-
Mozambique", http://gvnet.com/torture/Mozambique.htm, [accessed
<date>] |
