“The Mozambican State is a signatory of international conventions and protocols and what is asked at these times and always is that these legal instruments are scrupulously complied with”, Vicente Manjate, responsible for the Human Rights department at OAM, told Lusa.
Manjate added that a possible deportation of the four Angolan citizens without complying with the law would be even more serious, if it is confirmed that the persons concerned have applied for asylum in Mozambique.
"The order cannot take an assertive position on the case, because it is still collecting data from the competent authorities, after the case was triggered on social networks and by civil society organizations", he emphasized.
Vicente Manjate, who is running for president of the OAM, added that the Mozambican lawyers "will intercede with the competent authorities, if there is any anomaly in the protection of the rights" of the four Angolan citizens.
For his part, Luís Bitone, president of the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), told Lusa that the entity “is following up” the case, refusing to give more information.
On Wednesday, the Mozambican Human Rights Defenders Network and its president, Adriano Nuvunga, denounced an alleged intention to extradite a whistleblower, the pregnant woman and their two children, calling for the Mozambican authorities to retreat.
“The major concern for human rights defenders in the region is that the young Man Gena is at serious risk of being silenced in Angola, where the Mozambican authorities want to send him back” for illegally entering the country, reads a statement from the network. .
Also on Wednesday, the parliamentary group of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) expressed “enormous concern” for the complaints made by the wife.
According to UNITA, Clemência Suzete Vumi alleges that the four are “on the verge of being compulsorily extradited to Angola, putting their lives at risk”.
The UNITA statement adds that the four left for Mozambique “in search of political and legal protection, following persecution” resulting from the denunciations that Gelson Emanuel Quintas, better known as Man Gena, made “about the alleged involvement of high-ranking figures of the National Police and the Criminal Investigation Services [of Angola] in drug trafficking”.
