Mozambican support for armed groups fighting the white-minority rule governments in Rhodesia and South Africa led to those two countries sponsoring the Renamo movement, which fought Frelimo in the 1977-1992 civil war."(BBC Monitoring)
Photograph by Sebastio Salgado
Mozambique. 1994. The photos are of Refugees in Mutarara. Refugee: "a person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster"(Webster). During the 1977-1992 civil war an estimated 1.7 million Mozambican refugees fled to neighboring countries such as Malawi, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Zambia, Tanzania, and South Africa. This number may seem high, but this does not include an estimated four million internally displaced people who also fled.
Salgado says this about these three photographs "A bus has just arrived in Mutarara in Mozambique carrying refugees from a camp at Nyaminthuthu in Malawi. From here, the returnees will continue traveling, by foot, in trucks, by boat, across the Zambeze River, until they are reunited with their families... Born in Malawi and know their own country only from their parents stories...".
Work Cited Page
Bureau of African Affairs. "Background Note: Mozambique." US Department of State
Department of State USA, Feb. 2010. Web 11 March 2010.
BBC Monitoring "Mozambique Country Profile." BBC News.
10 March 2010. 11 March 2010
Photograph
Salgado, Sebastiao. Photograph. Migrations: Humanity in Transition. Aperture. New York, 2000. 239.
It is incredible that that many people can be displaced by a single conflict, and yet it happens all over the world. There are so many conflicts going on in the world at any given time, and millions of people are suffering as a direct result of these disputes. It is often very easy to focus on the politics of war, and forget that there are real people whose lives are being drastically changed by these events. Our focus needs to shift from the political issues of war, and remember the millions of people who have never stood in their own country.
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