(CPJ/IFEX) – CPJ has once again protested the government’s brutal repression of the Angolan press. **Updates IFEX alerts of 13 August, 11 August and 10 August 1999** On 9 August 1999, four plainclothes police officers from the Criminal Investigation Department (DNIC) raided the studios of Radio Ecclesia, a Roman Catholic FM station in Luanda, while […]
(CPJ/IFEX) – CPJ has once again protested the government’s brutal repression
of the Angolan press.
**Updates IFEX alerts of 13 August, 11 August and 10 August 1999**
On 9 August 1999, four plainclothes police officers from the Criminal
Investigation Department (DNIC) raided the studios of Radio Ecclesia, a
Roman Catholic FM station in Luanda, while the station was re-broadcasting a
BBC interview with UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi. Armed with search and arrest
warrants, the police officers seized Radio Ecclesia’s transmission equipment
and the recording of the BBC interview. They then arrested chief editor
Paulo Juliao and two other Radio Ecclesia journalists, Laurinda Tavares and
Filipe Joaquim.
The three men were held at DNIC headquarters for about four hours and were
interrogated separately. The interrogators accused them of “disseminating
dangerous information” and “threatening public security,” and questioned
them about their political views.
On 10 August, DNIC officers re-arrested Juliao along with Antonio Jaka,
Radio Ecclesia’s director, and Emanuel da Mata, another journalist at the
radio station. This followed another rebroadcast of the Savimbi interview in
Radio Ecclesia’s midday news program. The DNIC also detained BBC journalist
Reginaldo da Silva for questioning because he had passed on the interview
tape to Radio Ecclesia. Police later seized another copy of the tape from da
Silva’s house.
Three Angolan state television journalists were also interrogated on 10
August because their network had rebroadcast the same Savimbi interview. All
the arrested journalists were released later that day, but the authorities
forced Radio Ecclesia to sign an agreement that it would not refer to Jonas
Savimibi or UNITA on the air without prior permission from the government.
Radio Ecclesia was accused of having violated “the internal and external
security of the state” under Angola’s notorious Law 7/78, also known as the
Law on Crimes against State Security. Law 7/78 violates Article 35 of the
1992 Angolan Constitution, which guarantees the right to freedom of
expression. However, the absence of a functioning Constitutional Court in
Angola means that Law 7/78 cannot be challenged at this time.
Nor is the Radio Ecclesia case an isolated incident. On the contrary, many
Angolan journalists have told CPJ that the prevailing climate of harassment
and repression makes them afraid to do their work.
CPJ was encouraged by the 23 June letter of the minister of social
communications, Pedro Hendrik Vaal Neto, in which he assured them that the
government of Angola had never intended to “harass any journalist or shut
down the private media.” To CPJ’s dismay, however, the independent press in
Angola has been subjected to even harsher constraints in recent weeks. The
government’s repeated infringements of press freedom violate both the
Angolan Constitution and Angola’s obligations under international law.
Recommended Action
Send appeals to the minister :
political points of view, and not simply those of the government
practice their profession without censorship or fear of reprisal
indeed doing something to “guarantee to the entire Angolan nation a totally
democratic regime,” as he so eloquently wrote in his letter to CPJ
Appeals To
His Excellency Pedro Hendrik Vaal Neto
Minister of Social Communications
Luanda, Angola
Fax: +244 2 343 495
Please copy appeals to the source if possible.
