‘Mozambican journalists’ lives are on the line in Cabo Delgado’ 7 March 2021

On April 7, 2020, Ibrahimo Abu Mbaruco, a reporter for the Palma Community Radio in Mozambique’s northernmost province Cabo Delgado, left work for home at about 6pm and shortly after texted a colleague to say he was “surrounded by soldiers”. He has not been heard from since. For years, Mbaruco has been covering the violence in Cabo Delgado, where armed groups have been terrorising civilians since 2017. The violence has left hundreds dead and forced more than 565,000 people to flee their homes and villages. Sadly, Mbaruco’s story is not an anomaly. Many local journalists reporting on the violence, and its links to Cabo Delgado’s $50bn multinational liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry, have been subjected to random arrests, unlawful detentions, torture and assaults by Mozambique’s military and police since 2018. Just a month before Mbaruco’s encounter with “soldiers”, another local journalist, Roberto Abdala, had disappeared in the same region.

… Not only transnational fossil fuel giants, private banking institutions and foreign security firms, but also many Mozambican elites hold stakes in the province’s lucrative gas industry. This means anyone raising inconvenient truths and asking questions about the possible links between the industry and the ongoing violence is a threat to their interests. Journalists can only safely report on the region if they agree to tow the government’s line – that the violence is a simple case of “foreign Islamist terrorists” trying to gain a foothold in Mozambique. The truth, of course, is not that simple. Since the discovery of a vast quantity of natural gas off the coast of Cabo Delgado in 2010, transnational energy giants all but took over the province. Thus far, more than 550 families have been displaced from their lands and fishing grounds to make way for the Afungi LNG Park which will house onshore support facilities for industry players in Africa’s three biggest LNG projects – Mozambique LNG led by Total, Coral LNG led by Eni, and ExxonMobil and Rovuma LNG led by ExxonMobil.

..Just last month, AU Chairperson and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa gave a speech at the launch of the Digital Platform for Safety of Journalists in Africa and said: “We look to this digital platform to contribute to an enabling environment for the media to operate in AU member states through respect for the rights of journalists and media workers and an end to impunity for crimes against journalists.” But as Ramaphosa and other leaders of the AU remain silent about the ongoing oppression of the media in Mozambique, such pledges to “end impunity for crimes against journalists in Africa” ring hollow. By continuing their friendly relations with Mozambique and investing in its gas industry, the AU leaders are enabling, normalising and even rewarding the state’s violent oppression of the media. Their silence makes it possible for extrajudicial disappearances, assaults and imprisonment to take place. At best, they are hypocrites. At worst, they are complicit in tyranny.