The following is a CPJ press release: ANGOLA: MARQUES GETS SIX MONTHS FOR DEFAMING PRESIDENT New York, March 31, 2000 — A Luanda court today convicted Angolan journalist Rafael Marques of defaming President José Eduardo dos Santos in an October 1999 article. Marques was sentenced to six months in prison, but the sentence was suspended […]
The following is a CPJ press release:
ANGOLA: MARQUES GETS SIX MONTHS FOR DEFAMING PRESIDENT
New York, March 31, 2000 — A Luanda court today convicted Angolan journalist Rafael Marques of defaming President José Eduardo dos Santos in an October 1999 article. Marques was sentenced to six months in prison, but the sentence was suspended pending appeal, sources in Luanda told CPJ.
Marques was released on US$200 bail to await a Supreme Court ruling on the appeal filed by his lawyer, Anacleta Perreira, alleging due process violations. It is not clear when the court will issue its ruling.
Marques was arrested on October 16, 1999, at his Luanda home, and charged with defamation in connection with an article titled “The Lipstick of Dictatorship,” which ran under his byline in the July 3, 1999, edition of the independent weekly Agora.
In the article, Marques charged that Angolan president José Eduardo dos Santos was responsible for “the destruction of the country… (and) for the promotion of incompetence, embezzlement and corruption as political and social values.” Marques also referred to dos Santos as a “dictator.”
While in jail, Marques was denied access to a lawyer and to his family. He went on hunger strike for eight days to protest his illegal detention and was finally released on bail on November 25, on condition that he not leave Luanda, contact journalists, or make public statements.
Presided over by former secret service officer Joaquim de Abreu Cangato, the Marques trial opened on March 6 and proceeded in near-secrecy throughout the month. On March 22, defense lawyer Luis Nascimento walked out of the courtroom to protest the unfairness of the proceedings. Judge Cangato subsequently ordered that Nascimento be disbarred for six months, even though such a decision can legally be taken only by the Angolan Bar Association.
Marques, 28, began his career in 1992 at the government-owned Jornal de Angola, which he left in October 1998 for the independent paper Folha 8. Besides his work as a free-lance journalist, Marques is Angola coordinator for the Open Society Institute. He is also a stage actor and a poet. His first collection of Portuguese poems, In the Heart of The Enemy, was published in 1998.
