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Mozambique Back to Calm After Three Days of Riots Over Food, Power Prices
Mozambican police said clashes with demonstrators who were protesting rising food and electricity prices in the central city of Chimoio are now over.
“The situation is now calm,” Belmiro Mutadiwa, a police spokesman in Chimoio, 800 kilometers (500 miles) north of the capital Maputo, said in a phone interview today. “Six people were injured and two remain in hospital.”
The riots started in Maputo on Sept. 1, before spreading north, 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.
Police in Chimoio said they fired rubber bullets at protesters who barricaded roads and arrested more than 50 of them. Ten people died in Maputo in the three days of street clashes, Radio Mozambique reported today, citing Health Minister Ivo Garrido.
The protests over prices were the second since President 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.
To contact the reporters on this story: Fred Katerere in Maputo at fkaterere@bloomberg.net; Franz Wild in Johannesburg at fwild@bloomberg.net.
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