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The photograph shows a barefoot boy walking along a street in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. He’s wearing a homemade “bullet-proof vest” pieced together from bits of cardboard.
Some readers may be thinking: well, that’s not going to stop bullets. But surely that’s the point, and this child knows it better than most people do.
For weeks, he’s been surrounded by deadly violence that’s engulfed Maputo and other parts of the country following the announcement of election results.
On October 24, Mozambique’s election commission declared the ruling party, Frelimo, had won the October 9 elections. Party leader Daniel Chapo would be the president-elect. The major opposition party, Podemos, cried foul.
International observers, including the African Union, the European Union, and the Commonwealth, have raised serious concerns about the credibility of the electoral process. They’ve called for a thorough investigation into allegations of election irregularities.
Indeed, the elections and the campaigning period saw widespread irregularities, political killings, and restrictions on freedom of expression and assembly.
Tensions then increased between election day and the announcement of results two weeks later, when things exploded. Post-election protests across the country on October 24 and 25, were met with live bullets and tear gas from security forces, killing at least 11 people and injuring dozens of others.
Since then, many days have unfolded in a similar pattern: thousands of people come out to protest, and authorities use excessive force against them. Security forces continue to fire live ammunition at protesters and have indiscriminately fired into residential areas. Media report dozens more killed and hundreds injured.
On Thursday last week, violence broke out as a planned protest quickly descended into a standoff between security forces and protesters.
Heavily armed police and soldiers had used military-style vehicles to block peaceful protesters from reaching the heart of the city. One group managed to break through the security cordon, and police tried stopping them with tear gas, which got into people’s homes. Some people responded by throwing stones and bottles at the police.
It seems these clashes and excessive responses by security forces won’t end soon.
We can roll out the inevitable list of “shoulds.” Of course, authorities should investigate these events, especially the killings. Of course, security forces should follow international law enforcement standards and not use live ammunition when they don’t absolutely have to. Of course, concerned governments should press Mozambican authorities on these things.
But until then, what’s a child in Maputo supposed to do? Wearing a cardboard “bullet-proof vest” won’t help, he knows, but neither will anything else he does. It seems a moving symbol of the powerlessness people feel in the face of the deadly violence raging around them.
So often in crises and conflicts around the globe, the outside world sees the results of violence in gruesome images. But sometimes, a photo that’s not bloody at all tells the story even better.
