A prisoner of conscience was detained, then given a suspended prison sentence. Scores of suspected supporters of the União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola (UNITA), National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, including possible prisoners of conscience, were detained for short periods. There were reports of severe beatings and other ill-treatment by police and soldiers. Unarmed civilians were reported to have been deliberately killed by government soldiers. UNITA was responsible for gross human rights abuses including torture and executions. The implementation of the peace agreement, concluded in Lusaka in November 1994 (see Amnesty International Reports 1995 and 1996) between the government of President José Eduardo dos Santos and UNITA, led by Jonas Malheiro Savimbi, and monitored by the UN Angola Verification Mission III (UNAVEM III), lagged far behind schedule. UNITA retained control of much of rural Angola, and cities remained overcrowded with displaced people afraid to return to their villages. A "special status" for Jonas Savimbi – a requirement of the Lusaka Protocol – remained undecided after UNITA rejected the offer of one of two vice-presidential posts. The Government of National Unity and Reconciliation had not been established by the end of the year. The quartering and demobilization of UNITA's 63,000 troops was not completed until October. Of those encamped, an estimated 30 per cent were civilians captured to make up the numbers. More than 13,000 people deserted the camps. UNITA was reported to be concealing large quantities of military material and thousands of soldiers in northern Angola and in its police force. By the end of the year very few UNITA troops had been demobilized or integrated into the army and police force. By December, 4,000 of UNITA's estimated 5,000 police had been moved to quartering areas. The government's 5,000-strong paramilitary Rapid Intervention Police were confined to barracks. In August, the disarming of civilians commenced; police collected a variety of weapons, including mines and rocket launchers, which were stored under UNAVEM III supervision. An amnesty law was passed in May in favour of those who had committed military and security crimes. The government released 379 prisoners arrested in the context of the conflict and UNITA released 170 people, including four South Africans (see Amnesty International Report 1996). The fate and whereabouts of hundreds of people arrested after the war resumed in late 1992 remained unclear (see Amnesty International Reports 1994 to 1996). The Human Rights Unit within UNAVEM III compiled two reports documenting cases of human rights abuses and making recommendations for remedial action by the Joint Commission set up to implement the peace agreement. The April report indicated that neither the government nor UNITA had responded adequately to the Unit's recommendations. A second report was produced in mid-December. As a result of delays in implementing the peace process, some 300,000 refugees in neighbouring countries were not repatriated, although several thousand returned to Angola independently. An estimated million or more displaced persons, including some 40,000 people in Jamba, UNITA's former headquarters in southeastern Angola, were unable to return to their homes. Despite the peace agreement, there was little security for ordinary citizens. Unemployment, poverty and corruption contributed to high levels of violent crime. Poorly paid, ill-disciplined police and soldiers were also involved in crimes. Tension in Luanda, the capital, rose in May as the cost of living escalated. Demonstrations were banned and paramilitary police were deployed in the city. In June, a new Prime Minister, Fernando França Van Dumem, was given the task of stabilizing the economy. Import controls were introduced and over a thousand illegal immigrants, mostly traders from other African countries, were deported. Fighting continued in Cabinda, which is separated from the rest of Angola by a strip of Zairian territory, between government forces and the three armed factions of the separatist Frente da Libertação do Enclave de Cabinda (FLEC), Cabinda Enclave Liberation Front. In August, after months of bilateral talks with the government, the three factions agreed on a joint platform for peace negotiations. Evidence of killings carried out in previous years came to light in July in Soyo, Zaire province, when a mine clearance team discovered the remains of at least 60 people, apparently victims of deliberate and arbitrary killings. Local residents said that the victims were probably people abducted during UNITA's occupation of Soyo in 1993 and 1994, but UNITA denied responsibility for the killings. By the end of the year no forensic or judicial investigation had been carried out to determine the identity of the victims or the perpetrators. One prisoner of conscience was held briefly and tried for exercising his right to freedom of expression. Father Konrad Liebscher, a German Roman Catholic priest, was arrested in Luanda in May while distributing posters asking why people did not enjoy rights such as clean water and freedom of expression. The posters invited people to alert those in authority by demonstrating peacefully. The Luanda municipal court sentenced him to one month's imprisonment, suspended for two years, for carrying out a demonstration without official permission. By the end of the year the Supreme Court had not considered Konrad Liebscher's appeal against his conviction or the prosecution's appeal against the suspension of his sentence. Scores of people suspected of supporting UNITA, including possible prisoners of conscience, were detained for short periods. About 60 suspected UNITA sympathizers were briefly detained in Uige City in May. They had previously been detained without charge or trial for six weeks in late 1995 and, on the grounds that the prison was full, held in 15 containers without adequate ventilation or sanitary facilities. There were reports of severe beatings and other ill-treatment by government soldiers and police, sometimes as they were carrying out arrests or searches and sometimes while the police themselves were committing crimes. For example, officers of the Rapid Intervention Police assaulted and robbed women at Senga market, Uige province, in June. Government police and soldiers carried out killings which appeared to be extrajudicial executions. In none of the following cases were the perpetrators known to have been brought to justice by the end of the year. A police officer shot dead a young street vendor in a busy street in Luanda in June. Also in June, a policeman beat a pregnant woman to death in a market in Uige City. The motive for these killings was unclear. A woman was killed in Cabinda City in May in what may have been an extrajudicial execution when soldiers and police, in retaliation for the murder of a policeman, drove about firing indiscriminately into the crowd. According to reports, some police and soldiers were arrested but had not been brought to trial by the end of the year. António Casimiro, a television cameraman, was reportedly extrajudicially executed in Cabinda City in October after security personel broke into his house. The motives for the killing were unclear but he had earlier reported receiving threats, apparently in connection with his work. Those responsible for apparently politically motivated killings which occurred in 1995 had not been brought to justice by the end of 1996. Domingos Hungo, Governor of Bengo province, was shot dead and two of his bodyguards were injured in Luanda on New Year's Eve, 1995. Initially both the government and UNITA said they suspected a political motive. Suspected perpetrators were arrested but none were brought to justice. The results of investigations into the killings of Ricardo Melo, a journalist (see Amnesty International Report 1996), in January, and of Adão da Silva, UNITA's Provincial Secretary for Luanda and a former high-ranking government police officer, in July, had not been published by the end of the year. UNITA continued to hold prisoners. Of the thousands of people who remain in Jamba, hundreds of civilians had been taken there as prisoners. In 1996, as in previous years, some managed to escape. There were dozens of reports of people being detained on suspicion of being government spies or supporters. UNITA forces were responsible for torture. In Uige province in June, a man was severely beaten for trying to stop a UNITA soldier raping his wife. In the quartering areas, where UNITA was responsible for discipline, soldiers were publicly caned for theft and other offences. Beating on the sexual organs was reported in Nduko quartering area in Zaire province. Other methods of torture included the use of whips with several thongs, each with a pebble tied to its tip, and severe beatings on the hands. Costa Afonso Rangel, a government municipal official in Bocoio, Benguela province, was allegedly beaten on the head with an iron bar in January by UNITA soldiers whom he had accused of stealing cattle. Amnesty International received new information that the torture of João André Lina had not resulted in his death as previously reported (see Amnesty International Report 1996). He was crippled after being subjected to candambala, a severe beating by two men armed with sticks who each hit him 50 times on the back. UNITA continued to sentence people to death for both political and non-political offences in accordance with its internal regulations and military law, but details were difficult to obtain. In one case, in February, two UNITA soldiers accused of killing someone they considered to be a "witch" were executed at Mbanza Congo airport in Zaire province. Information came to light during the year about executions carried out in previous years. In September 1994, João Lourenço Madalena and José António Cristina were executed in Nkama Nsoke village, Zaire province, after being convicted of collaborating with a government reconnaissance group. There were unconfirmed reports that two people had been executed in October 1995 just before a stay of execution was ordered as the result of an appeal by Alioune Blondin Beye, the head of UNAVEM III; the lives of eight others, on whose behalf Alioune Blondin Beye had also appealed, were spared (see Amnesty International Report 1996). Armed FLEC factions carried out human rights abuses. In January, the Frente para a Libertação do Enclave de Cabinda–Forças Armadas de Cabinda, Cabinda Enclave Liberation Front–Cabinda Armed Forces, abducted three South Africans and a national of São Tomé and Príncipe who were working for a gold-mining company in Buco-Zau. The four were released in March, reportedly after a ransom was paid. Amnesty International published two reports in April and October. Angola: The Lusaka Protocol – what prospect for human rights? examined the observance by the government and UNITA of the human rights provisions of the Protocol. Angola: From war to ... what? No reconciliation without accountability called for the establishment of mechanisms to provide additional protection for human rights after the withdrawal of UNAVEM III. Two Amnesty International delegates visited Angola in June and July and met government officials, representatives of UNAVEM III and non-governmental organizations and other individuals. In August, the organization issued a memorandum containing comments and recommendations concerning the work of the Human Rights Unit, which was welcomed by the head of UNAVEM III. The organization also appealed to the government to ensure that perpetrators of human rights violations were brought to justice, but received no response.

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