Maputo - Mozambique police on Thursday fired into the air to disperse protesters demanding the release of their leader who was arrested during a demonstration at a coal mine owned by Brazil's Vale group, an activist said.
Around 200 protesters had picketed a police station in the northern Tete province where their leader Refo Agostinho was being held after his arrest a day earlier.
“Police are shooting into the air with real bullets. They want people to disperse,” Rui de Vasconcelos, a community activist, told AFP by telephone from the coal-rich Tete region.
But he said the picketers vowed not to move until Agostinho was freed. “The constitution gives us the right to protest. Why do police react like this?”
Police were not immediately reachable for comment.
Agostinho was arrested late Wednesday afternoon during a blockade by hundreds of brickmakers outside the mine who were demanding compensation for the loss of livelihood when they were resettled after Vale took over the land the mine now occupies in Tete province.
“He was giving an interview to a television crew when he was arrested and was accused of being an instigator,” Jeremias Vunjanhe, coordinator of the Academic Action for Community Development (ADECRU), told AFP.
Three people were also hurt on Wednesday when they fell while trying to evade police who tried to put down the protest outside Vale coal mine.
Some 300 protesters had spent 24 hours blocking Vale's open-pit coal mine as well as the railway line carrying coal exports.
The former brickmakers had staged a 24 hour sit-in around the mine demanding Vale pay out full compensation for the loss of livelihood suffered when the community was resettled 35 kilometres away to make room for the mine.
They used to make and sell mud blocks from clay dug out of the area for use in construction. They say they are unable to continue to do so in the area they were moved to.
Protesters say the roughly $1 900 each brickmaker received from 2008 as initial compensation was not enough and that in some cases these businesses should receive up to $32 000 for the loss of their activities.
Neither government nor Vale say they are prepared to open fresh negotiations with the group. - AFP