Mozambique

The civil war of 1976–1992 pitted the ruling communist party, Liberation Front of Mozambique (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique, FRELIMO), against the rebel movement, Mozambican National Resistance (Resistência Nacional Moçambicana, RENAMO). As, after the conflict, the two belligerent parties opted to reject accountability through transitional justice, the FRELIMO government unconditionally amnestied crimes committed during the civil war. However, survivors living in central Mozambique, the epicentre of the strife, claimed that civil war–related spirits compelled them to revisit the past in community courts in order to settle accounts with their former torturers. These popular experiences produced meaningful transitional justice processes that undermined attempts by the central Mozambican government to sustain a culture of impunity for civil war crimes