DURBAN - AMNESTY International (AI) said media coverage of the Amarula Hotel rescue operation in Palma, Mozambique, was extremely one-sided, stating that white contractors were prioritised and rescued.
Their statement gave a voice to other victims and survivors whose testimonies had not been heard, it said.
This week, the Daily News reported that Meryl Knox, the mother of slain Durban diver Adrian Nel, condemned a statement from AI which alleged that the rescue attempts by the South African private military company Dyck Advisory Group (DAG) were jeopardised by racial discrimination.
Nel was allegedly killed when he fled the attacks in a convoy leaving the Amarula Hotel in Palma, Mozambique, during insurgent attacks in March. Knox’s younger son, Wesley and her husband, Greg, were eventually rescued.
Survivors of the attack by the armed group, known locally as al-Shabaab in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado region, told AI that white contractors were prioritised for evacuation ahead of black locals.
The AI statement alleged an estimated 220 civilians sought refuge in the Amarula Palma Hotel. Of these, around 200 were black nationals, and about 20 were white contractors.
DAG said its rescue operation at Amarula Hotel transported 24 people – 18 were black and six were white.
Deprose Muchena, AI regional director for East and Southern Africa said DAG’s numbers suggest that preferential treatment of white contractors was more extreme than AI researchers previously thought.
This particular statement from DAG responded to an allegation that black national survivors who spoke to AI did not make, he said.
Muchena said the statement by AI made no allegations and raised no questions of racial discrimination beyond the Amarula Hotel rescue operation.
“Amnesty International has been monitoring and documenting war crimes and human rights violations in Cabo Delgado since the beginning of this conflict in 2017. Amnesty’s press release is part of this three-year-long investigative effort in which DAG, one of the parties in the conflict accused of these crimes, has shown complete disregard to the right of reply. Before Amnesty International published the report in March 2021 that included severe and credible allegations of war crimes,” Muchena said.
“Amnesty does not say anywhere in the statement that only whites were being rescued by helicopter at Amarula Hotel. Amnesty researchers spoke to black national eyewitnesses who survived the Amarula convoy attack,“ he added.
Muchena said before AI released the statement, the global news narrative about the rescue was already one-sided.
Daily News