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Mozambique Riots Spread North, Protesters Injured in Clashes With Police
Mozambican police in the central city of Chimoio clashed with demonstrators who blocked roads over food and energy price increases, resulting in six people being injured, a hospital official said.
Two of the injured were in a serious condition in the town about 800 kilometers (500 miles) north of the capital, Maputo, Louisa Hazvinei, an administrator at Chimoio Government Hospital, said in a telephone interview today. More than 50 people were arrested during the protests, regional police spokesman Belmiro Mutadiwa, said by phone.
“They say they were wounded by rubber bullets fired by the police while they were striking and demonstrating in the streets,” Hazvinei said. “Some strikers have blocked roads in Chimoio.”
Riots started in Maputo on Sept. 1 after unidentified people sent text messages urging Mozambicans to strike against price increases. The government announced plans to raise water and electricity rates by 30 percent starting on Sept. 1 and the price of bread by 25 percent on Sept. 6. Fuel and cement prices have also risen.
Maputo was mostly peaceful after two days of fighting that killed at least seven people, the city’s police spokesman Arnaldo Chefo said.
“The situation is under control although we are still receiving isolated cases of violence in places on the outskirts of Maputo,” he said.
Cheapest in Region
The strike over prices is the second since Armando Emilio Guebuza, a 66-year-old businessman who is serving his second term, came to power in 2004. Riots in 2008 against food and fuel price increases left at least three people dead.
The energy price increase was necessary due to the high cost of producing power from the country’s Cahora Bassa hydropower plant, Energy Minister Salvador Namburete said in a statement on closely held broadcaster Soico Televisao. Power costs in Mozambique are cheaper than in other southern African countries, he said. The bread price will not be reduced as the government is already indirectly subsidizing it, Industry Minister Antonio Fernando said on Radio Mocambique.
The price increases follow the removal of a fuel subsidy, introduced after the 2008 violence, and a weaker currency that has made imports from neighboring South Africa more expensive, Joseph Hanlon, visiting fellow at the Milton Keynes, England- based Open University, said in an e-mailed statement yesterday.
The metical depreciated for a third day versus South Africa’s rand, losing 0.7 percent to 5.1152 to the currency by 5:18 p.m. in Maputo, extending its fall this year to 20 percent.
World food prices are also stronger, rising last month to the highest level since September 2008, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization.
Wheat prices have climbed after Russia, the world’s third biggest grower last year, extended a ban on exports into next year after a drought destroyed crops. The December-delivery contract has risen 20 percent this year.
To contact the reporter on this story: Fred Katerere in Maputo at fkaterere@bloomberg.net; Brian Latham in Durban, South Africa at blatham@bloomberg.net.
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