Two Portuguese journalists from CMTV who were covering riots in Maputo were escorted by the Mozambican authorities to the airport to leave the country.

Special envoys Alfredo Leite and Marc Ricardo Silva were expelled from Mozambique while covering - for CM, CMTV and the NOW channel - the unrest in that country following the presidential elections in October.

According to Alfredo Leite, the local authorities justified the expulsion on the grounds that they were both carrying a tourist visa and not a work visa - a procedure which, he says, "is very common" in crisis situations. "It's what you do when your duty to inform requires you to travel urgently and it's what happens when you travel to Ukraine, Lebanon, Israel or the USA - just to mention recent examples," explains the journalist.

"This is how it is in democratic countries that live reasonably with freedom of the press. Unfortunately, this is not the case in Mozambique," the journalist emphasizes in a publication by CMTV.

Alfredo Leite and image reporter Marc Ricardo Silva witnessed Thursday's demonstrations in Maputo. The following day they were called to the hotel lobby and questioned by the Mozambican authorities. Their passports were seized and, on Sunday, they were escorted to the airport by "Mozambican immigration officers of exemplary correctness". At the airport, they took a plane to Lisbon.

"The live coverage we did in Maputo neighborhoods and the material we collected for a major report began to bother some of the entities in charge of keeping journalists in order," notes Alfredo Leite.

Meanwhile, on Friday, MISA Mozambique condemned the expulsion of the journalists, saying that it had "learned with great concern of the expulsion from Mozambique of Portuguese journalists who were in the country covering the demonstrations that characterize the current post-election crisis".

(Photo DR)