"It's the Mozambican state that killed Matavel"

The Director of the Mozambican Network of Human Rights Defenders (RMDDH), Adriano Nuvunga, today accused the Mozambican state of having murdered social activist and human rights defender Anastácio Matavel.

"Matavel wasn't killed by a drunk, it was the Mozambican state that killed Anastácio Matavel. It is a state crime that took Anastácio Matavel's life," he said.

The activist was murdered on October 7, 2019, by six agents from the Special Operations Group (GOE). He was riddled with 13 bullets in the middle of the election period.

He said that after the crime, the GOE agents were found in a traffic accident near the site of the martyr. "We were lucky. They were found with police uniforms, badges and weapons from the Mozambican state."

In June 2020, the Judicial Court of Gaza Province sentenced six defendants to between three and 24 years in prison. The state was acquitted of the charge because, in the court's opinion, the defendants acted in their own name and interests.

For the RMDDH, there is a mastermind behind the crime, but he has not yet been identified. And the organization believes that, given the number of bullets fired, there was another intention behind the murder.

"When 13 bullets were fired at a good citizen, the intention was not just to kill. It was to kill Matavel physically, but also to affect the state of mind of each one of us. They wanted to kill the human rights movement in the country. And that's why, even though they were found, and the fight was on to bring them to justice, justice behaved like that, denying justice to the Mozambican people and to Matavel's family," he noted.

He criticized the fact that, although there was evidence, the local prosecutor's office had not summoned the mastermind of the crime and had given the killers lenient sentences.

Nuvunga recalled that that year observers discovered that the number of voters in the province had been inflated by double in order to secure more seats in the Assembly of the Republic.