Death toll rises as protesters rage against Mozambique election results | Mozambique

Silvio Jeremias was on his way home from his job at a gas station in Mozambique's capital Maputo on the night of October 25 when he and his friends happened upon a group of protesters demonstrating against that day's election results.

The ruling Frelimo party's presidential candidate, Daniel Chapo, secured 70.7% of the vote, according to official results, ensuring that the party that has ruled Mozambique since independence in 1975 remained in power, but there were widespread allegations of rigging .

At the protest, one of many across the country, police fired live bullets and Jeremias, who had a two-year-old daughter, was shot.

“This situation was a total shock for us. He was very young,” said his friend Carmelita Chissico. According to Human Rights Watch, Jeremias is one of at least 11 people killed by security forces during nationwide protests against election results on October 24 and 25. 50 of them suffered serious gunshot wounds.

Police said they only fired live bullets into the air to disperse the crowd. Angela Uaela, a police spokeswoman, said a woman was killed by “stray bullets” and five people were injured as police tried to stop supporters of the opposition Podemos party from snatching a weapon from them.

Mozambique is one of the poorest countries in the world and its young population – the average age is under 18 – is turning against Frelimo, which has ruled for almost five decades.

Her main opponent in last month's election was Venâncio Mondlane, a former forestry engineer and banker who captured the imagination of many younger voters.

Podemos claimed it won 53% of the vote and 138 seats in parliament. She has submitted 300kg worth of documents in support of a 100-page legal challenge to the election results. However, the official electoral commission said Frelimo increased its representation in the 250-seat parliament by 11 to 195 deputies, while Podemos gained 31.

Before the vote, civil society groups accused Frelimo of registering nearly 900,000 bogus voters in an electorate of 17 million. Mozambique's Catholic bishops claimed there had been vote fraud, while EU election observers said there were “irregularities in the counting and unjustified changes to the election results.”

On October 19, as allegations of election rigging were already circulating, lawyer Elvino Dias and Paulo Guambe, a filmmaker and Podemos official, were shot dead by unknown gunmen.

Human rights researchers say the shootings fit a pattern in which opposition politicians, journalists, activists and lawyers are killed and no one is brought to justice.

“It is premature to say whether there is evidence or not [as to who the killers are]“said Hilário Lole, spokesman for the National Criminal Police Service, which is investigating the case.

António Niquice, a member of Frelimo's central committee, said he was shocked by the shootings and called on the judiciary to hold the killers accountable.

Plainclothes police also allegedly shot at Mondlane as he held a news conference on October 21 at the site where Dias and Guambe were killed.

“They started firing real bullets directly at … Venâncio,” said Amade Ali, a 30-year-old who acted as one of Mondlane's bodyguards.

“We ran to the car [and I] “All of a sudden he was hit by a real bullet, not a rubber bullet,” he said, indicating that a bullet hit his right cheekbone. For those mourning Jeremiah, their grief has become mixed with calls for political change. Last Tuesday, mourners wept over his coffin, wearing white T-shirts with his face and holding up his photo. They shouted loudly and demanded justice and democracy.

In footage broadcast by STV, a local television station, two young women held up paper signs in Portuguese that read: “You can kill me, but don't kill democracy.”