Category: Articles

Yesterday, September 14, a judge of the provincial court of Cabinda sentenced José Marcos Mavungo, a 57 year-old human rights activist, to six years of imprisonment on the charge of rebellion. His legal counsels will appeal to the Supreme Court. Mavungo has already spent six months in jail, and will serve 5.5 more years in jail. The peaceful protest he attempted to organize on March 14 never took place, as it had been prohibited by the authorities. Nevertheless, police and security forces arrested him as he stepped out of a Catholic religious service early in the morning on the same day of the planned protest. The authorities charged him with the crime of rebellion. Mavungo’s sentencing was a mockery of justice. It did not meet basic due process guarantees and formal trial standards required by Angolan law.  The judge Jeremias Sofrera ignored the blatant lack of evidence exposed during the […]

For the second time in my legal and political brushes with the Angolan government, I learnt  of a banning order preventing me from entering Luanda, my city. I arrived in Luanda at 12.15 yesterday, having flown from South Africa.  While checking my passport, an immigration officer asked me: “What kind of problems do you have with the Angolan government?” He then told me of the order banning my entrance and held on to my passport. Another officer ordered me to join a group of foreigners in a waiting room who were possibly about to be repatriated for immigration irregularities. Apparently I was assumed a foreigner; one of the officers began to address me in English. After a while, another officer, playing the well-mannered cop, came to talk to me and informed me that his colleague had been overzealous. He added that there was an order banning me from leaving the […]

As evidence of the confusion abounding within political and judicial authorities with regard to the case of the 15 political prisoners, senior officials from the Criminal Investigation Service (SIC) and the Attorney General’s office in Luanda travelled to Lisbon. There, on 6 and 7 August, they interrogated Alberto Neto, owner of the property where the youths were arrested, and made bizarre accusations about the activists’ alleged plans. Alberto Neto, a politician and academic, was interrogated by the deputy attorney general of the Republic attached to SIC, Luciano Chaca, and the SIC special agent Pedro João, who coordinated the raid on Neto’s home that resulted in the arrest of 13 of the youths. In an exclusive interview with Maka Angola, Alberto Neto described what happened. “I was in Sweden as a visiting professor in the University of Malmo. I was told that over 50 police officers had surrounded and entered my […]

Fernando Baptista, father of the political prisoner Manuel Baptista Chivonde Nito Alves, was summoned on Friday to testify before the Criminal Investigation Service [SIC] in Luanda. He was questioned about his son’s primary school education and about his given name, which recalls the name of a famous anti-establishment leader from the 1970s. “I was interrogated by special agent Pedro João, in the presence of Superintendent Fernando Recheado. They wanted to know why I called my son Nito Alves,  and where he went to school from pre-school to the end of his primary education”, the father told Maka Angola. According to Fernando Baptista, the interrogation lasted one hour and “was based entirely on his name and his primary education”. “Special agent Pedro João also asked me if we are related to Commander Nito Alves and I said we were not”, said the father. The legendary commander Alves Bernardo Baptista “Nito Alves”, […]

On August 28, prosecutor António Nito, asked the court in the Angolan province of Cabinda to convict the human rights activist José Marcos Mavungo to 12 years of imprisonment on the charge of inciting rebellion – the maximum penalty allowed by law for this crime. The sentencing is scheduled for September 16. Mavungo was arrested without a warrant on March 14 when he was leaving morning mass. The protest against bad governance and human rights violations in Cabinda he had organized was banned by the government and did not take place. During the three days of hearings, no evidence was presented that Mavungo committed any crime. The trial revealed in more detail how the military intelligence fabricated his case and provided the central script for the proceedings. An intelligence file, referred to in Mavungo’s indictment, claims that intelligence officials found explosives and fliers in the streets on the eve of […]

The heavily armed Presidential Guard Unit is out in the streets, in parts of the capital Luanda for today’s celebration of President José Eduardo dos Santos’ 73rd birthday bash. In a strange sign, this time the guards are using war camouflaged helmets. Many of the soldiers are holding rocket-launchers, RPG-7s , and carrying backpacks of rockets. Why does a republic have to celebrate its president’s birthday? Why does the president’s birthday party have to mean the militarization of the streets? There is a protest set to take place today. The mothers, wives and sisters of the 15 political prisoners, will gather at the Independence Square to demand freedom for their loved ones. So far, the government and the judicial authorities have only politically accused the youth protesters with plotting a coup to overthrow President Dos Santos. After more than 60 days in the detention, the authorities have yet to charge […]