Tag: MPLA

Machete Torture: More Human Rights Abuses in Diamond-Rich Region

“I am Angolan!”, the informal diamond digger keeps screaming in pain and in vain, while the guard repeatedly beats him on the palm of his hands with a machete. His citizen’s rights are ignored. As the guard becomes more violent, the victim screams for his mother repeatedly, but his humanity is ignored as well. “Shit! Pardon does not exist”, the guard who is commanding the beatings of up to ten miners, laughs louder. He is known as Bonifácio. Video evidence has emerged of vicious and sadistic beatings recently meted out to informal miners known as ‘garimpeiros’ by private security guards. The assaults took place just weeks ago in the diamond-rich area of north-eastern Angola. The video, which contains harrowing scenes, was filmed on April 21, 2016 in the Dambi area of Cafunfo in the northeastern province of Lunda-Norte.  In unsparing detail, it shows the guards using machetes to intimidate, beat […]

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The Emperor Has no Clothes and the Naked Hunger Strike

The only two females in the Luanda Book Club case, Rosa Conde (29) and Laurinda Gouveia (26), have been on hunger strike since May 8 in protest at their continued detention in Viana prison, pending their appeal against a verdict and prison sentence which have been widely condemned as unfair and part of a political show-trial. They are also protesting against the attacks they suffered on the same day at the hands of dozens of other inmates. “When we were attacked, one of the prison guards who watched the beatings said [to their colleagues] ‘Let them kill themselves’. We are running terrible risks here. We are not safe,” stated Rosa Conde who is serving a sentence of two years and three months. The two young women had also been refusing to wear prison clothing until Rosa Conde collapsed on Wednesday.  She suffers from pneumonia, and was admitted to the prison […]

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Crashing Oil Prices, Propaganda and the Angolan Recipe for Disaster

Throughout the Angolan capital, Luanda, strategically located billboards announce a country being happily stewarded through development by the government. “Building a prosperous Angola based on solidarity”, is the boastful slogan across all ads celebrating the government’s achievements in all spheres of life. One such billboard celebrates “more electricity, more development”, in spite of the regular power outages. Such a massive propaganda exercise outside the electoral period has a precedent only in the early 1970s, when the Portuguese colonial authorities desperately tried to sell the idea that their rule was making people very happy, and independence could ruin all such great achievements. Nonetheless, this propaganda is in full swing at a time when the steady drop in the oil price on international markets could be good news for the Angolan people and a bad omen for their rulers. As a major countermeasure, last December the presidency decreed a 20 percent rise […]

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Member of Parliament Innovates in Law Breaking

Just days after being elected to the National Assembly by the provincial constituency of Huíla, Vigílio da Ressurreição Bernardo Tyova wrote to the minister of Geology and Mines asking for a mining concession in the municipality of Quilengues, in order to explore, extract, commercialize and export quartz. In the letter, dated 18 September 2012, Mr Tyova introduced himself as a managing partner, lawyer, “university professor” and 2nd secretary of the Provincial Committee of the  ruling MPLA for Huíla. Up to 2010, the businessman held the position of municipal administrator of Lubango, in the province of Huíla, where most of his businesses are based and have flourished. Already the title-holder of black granite mining concession nº 1012/327/TE/DNLCM/2008  in the municipality of Chibia, the lawmaker was looking to increase the number of concessions in his name. Omatali is a family business of which Mr Tyova is a 75 percent shareholder, with the […]

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The Woman who ‘Invaded’ Military Barracks in Benguela

The Army Military Academy in Lobito municipality, Benguela province, is investigating Maria Alexandra de Vitória Pereira, a 48-year-old Angolan citizen who is accused of having invaded the academy’s premises on 22 December. Maria Alexandra is the daughter of the late MPLA parliamentarian Carlos Alberto de Vitória Pereira Mac-Mahon. She in turn has laid a complaint against the academy, saying she was beaten and subjected to racial abuse there. The case began with a parked car. Ms Pereira stopped her car in the street near the academy’s wall about 10 pm to attend to her seven-year-old daughter Ashanti, who was crying. She was on the way back from a dinner, accompanied by José Patrocínio, a civic activist and the director of the NGO Omunga. Some soldiers surrounded the driver, demanding that she remove the vehicle immediately. Ms Pereira says she asked for the soldiers’ understanding, and asked them to let her […]

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How Police Commanders Brutally Assaulted Laurinda Gouveia

One National Police officer grabbed Laurinda Gouveia’s mobile phone, and another punched her in the face. They dragged her a few meters, by the hair, to a National Police vehicle. Laurinda committed the crime of treason by attempting to take part in a demonstration demanding the resignation of president José Eduardo dos Santos. What followed is her personal ordeal. Last Sunday, November 23, at around 4pm, Laurinda, a 2nd year student of Philosophy at the Catholic University, and part-time street vendor of barbecued meat, went to Independence Square in Luanda, in the company of three other activists. While her companions were trying to get to the Agostinho Neto monument, Laurinda was taking pictures from a distance. “The National Police patrol car took me to the 1st of May School [Commercial Institute of Luanda], beside the Square. Six police commanders and plain clothes SINSE  (State Security and Intelligence Service) officials surrounded […]

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From a CIA Conspiracy Theory to the Murdering of Activists

The trial regarding the 2012 killing of Angolan political activists Alves Kamulingue and Isaías Cassule, which resumed on November 18, continues today. The central question still concerns who, in the chain of command of the state and the ruling MPLA, ordered their deaths? What is known is that the two had been involved in organizing a demonstration on 27 May 2012, which was intended to involve former members of the Presidential Guard and demobilized soldiers. After negotiations with and pressure from the Presidential Intelligence Bureau, the former presidential guards pulled out of the protests. A further question is why the alleged killers of both men are being charged in a single case, although each death involved a different group of suspects. A total of seven suspects have been detained. In the Kamulingue case, two National Intelligence and State Security (SINSE) officials have been charged: António Gamboa Vieira Lopes and Paulo […]

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Online Protest in Memory of Activist Ganga

Maria José Vitorino de Carvalho has one mission in life: to demand justice for the political assassination of her eldest son, Manuel Hilbert de Carvalho Ganga, who was shot twice in the back and killed by a member of the Presidential Security Unit (USP) on November 23, 2013. Maria José Vitorino de Carvalho believes that it is her right, as a mother and citizen, to demand justice. As a grandmother she feels that she has a responsibility, in time, to explain to her 3 year old grandson, Uriel Tomás, the efforts made by the family in the face of the impunity of the murderer and those who ordered the execution of his father. On the mother’s request, Maka Angola and Club-K are currently promoting a photographic protest online in memory of Ganga. Citizens who wish to express their solidarity with the victim’s family, those who wish to fully exercise their […]

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General Awards Himself More Than 300 Square Kilometers of Land

The governor of the southern province of Kwanza-Sul, General Eusébio de Brito Teixeira, 61 years old, has recently authorized on his own and for himself land for agricultural use and the construction of condominiums. Through a glaring scheme of self-dealing, the governor and his family have already grabbed over 30,000 hectares (over 300 square kilometers) of land in Kwanza-Sul. A high-ranking figure in military strategy, within the inner circle of presidential power, parallel to the FAA – Angolan Armed Forces, General Eusébio de Brito Teixeira also occupies the post of representative of the Intelligence Bureau of the President of the Republic for Southern Angola. “We will adhere to the MPLA’s program for government, which is to increase growth and improve distribution [of wealth]”, quoted the governor on his inauguration by president José Eduardo dos Santos, on September 29, 2012. Adhering to the MPLA’s program, throughout the year of 2013, the […]

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The MPLA’s election plan

The action plan for the electoral campaign of the ruling People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which formally starts on July 31, contains strategies that need to be made plain for all to see, in the interests of peace, political stability, and the distinction between party and state. For the first phase of the campaign, MPLA defines the need to pay special attention “critical areas to ensure order and tranquillity among voters”. To this end, MPLA envisages to “instruct activists, sympathizers and friends of the MPLA and other voters not to take part in any actions that may suggest electoral impropriety, and to refrain from practising any kind of violence against other political parties or their activists.” It also underscores the need to “denounce political parties, civil society organizations and citizens who incite voters to violence, disturbance or electoral fraud.” The communications and security committee of MPLA’s electoral […]

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