Angola

If convicted of insulting Angolan President João Lourenço, the editor of “O Crime”, Mariano Brás could face up to 3 years in prison.

Radio journalist Alfredo Kuito is hospitalised after Angolan police unleash dogs on protesters in Ondijva.

Angolan police used live ammunition, teargas and dogs to break-up peaceful anti-government protests in Luanda.

The website of ‘Correio Angolense’, one of Angola’s most respected independent online news sources, was targeted following the publication of an article about claims that President Joao Lourenço’s chief of staff had embezzled public funds.

Internationally renowned journalist Rafael Marques de Morais and Mariano Bras Lourenco are charged by Angola with crimes against the state.

The Angolan government should urgently and impartially investigate police use of force to disperse a peaceful protest in the capital, Luanda. The police beat activists with batons and injured at least four protesters using police dogs.

Renowned Angolan journalist tells CPJ a prosecutor questioned him for three hours before charging him over an article that alleged wrongdoing by Angola’s attorney general.

The law grants the government and ruling party expansive power to interfere with the work of journalists, and potentially to prevent reporting on corruption or human rights abuses.

Serious concerns follow the deployment of Angolan military police over protests against the demolition of 625 homes.

The Angolan Supreme Court on Wednesday provisionally released 17 members of a book club who were jailed after they discussed peaceful protest and democracy at a meeting last June, inspired by Gene Sharp’s book, From Dictatorship to Democracy.

17 Angolan activists, known as the Luanda Book Club, were sentenced to between 2-8 years in prison after having gathered to read Domingos da Cruz’s unpublished manuscript Tools to Destroy a Dictatorship and Avoiding a New Dictatorship – Political Philosophy for the Liberation of Angola.

Angolan human rights activist José Marcos Mavungo was sentenced to six years in prison on charges of rebellion for his alleged role in planning an anti-government protest that did not even take place.

Rafael Marques de Morais was given a six-month prison sentence over his book outlining human rights abuses connected with the country’s diamond mining industry. The sentence came despite an out-of-court settlement reached last week that led Angolan generals to withdraw their complaints for defamation.

On 21 May 2015, a court in Angola indicated that libel charges against Rafael Marques de Morais – the author of Blood Diamonds: Torture and Corruption in Angola – would be dropped, but on 25 May 2015, the public prosecutor said he would proceed with a conviction.

Rafael Marques de Morais faced nine defamation charges over his 2011 book, “Blood Diamonds: Torture and Corruption in Angola,” in which he documented the torture and murder of villagers by private security forces in diamond mines.

Winner of this year’s Index on Censorship award for journalism, de Morais is facing 15 libel charges and 9 charges for criminal defamation arising from his 2012 book, Blood Diamonds: Corruption and torture in Angola.