Moz warns citizens of xeno threat
2010-07-13 20:01
Maputo - Mozambique officials said on Tuesday they will do everything possible to protect the lives of the more than three million Mozambican nationals living and working in South Africa amid fresh threats of a new wave of xenophobic attacks.
Domingos Fernandes, a senior officer at the minister of foreign affairs, told the public channel TVM that "the government has its eyes opened monitoring the situation in South Africa" to avert such attacks in the past when many Mozambicans where killed by angry mobs.
Fernandes also reported that the xenophobic threats will an issue to be raised during the SADC Foreign Ministers Meeting due to be held on Thursday in Maputo, Mozambique, as a way compel a regional condemnation of such despicable acts.
Mozambique's Consul in South Africa, Fernando Fazenda, told TVM on Tuesday that the consulate is liaising with local authorities to try to prevent such incidents.
Fazenda added that the consulate is urging all Mozambican nationals to stay calm and alert. In case the situation worsens or the threats materialise "they must contact the embassy so that they can be given direction as to how to abandon the places where the violence occurs. They also must avoid confrontation."
In 2008, over 60 people were killed when gangs of local poor black South Africans armed with clubs, machetes and torches descended on informal settlements and shanty towns, and attacked immigrants from Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabawe.
Several hundred immigrants were injured, and many thousands displaced, or returned to their home countries.
Mozambicans accounted for more than half of the death toll.
South Africans accuse foreigners of taking jobs away from them, among other grievances.
To avert a repeat of the acts South African police and the military have been deployed in several townships due to growing threats against foreign migrant workers and protests about squalid living conditions, reports in the country say.
- SAPA