Amnesty International Report 1998 - Angola

(This report covers the period January-December 1997)

Severe beatings by police were commonplace. An investigation into the deaths of 10 prisoners was severely flawed. There were reports of extrajudicial executions. Both the government and the União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola (unita), National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, killed unarmed civilians in contested areas of the country. unita held prisoners, including unita members suspected of disloyalty. An armed separatist group held hostages.

The implementation of the peace agreement signed in 1994 between the government of President José Eduardo dos Santos and unita, led by Jonas Malheiro Savimbi, continued despite delays and an outbreak of armed hostilities in mid-1997. In April parliament granted Jonas Savimbi the special status of President of the Largest Opposition Party. unita deputies took up the 70 National Assembly seats which the party had won in the 1992 elections and the Government of National Unity and Reconciliation was inaugurated. However, by the end of the year the unita leader had not taken up residence in Luanda, the capital

In July the UN Angola Verification Mission (unavem iii) gave way to the UN Observer Mission in Angola (monua). During the year nearly 5,000 UN military personnel were withdrawn and about 100 more UN civilian police were deployed. Under monua, the Human Rights Unit (see Amnesty International Report 1997) with fewer than 20 staff was upgraded to a Human Rights Division with 55 staff. However, no new appointments were made during 1997. The monua Human Rights Division submitted 50 cases of human rights abuses which were reported to have occurred since September 1996 to the ad hoc group on human rights. This group had been established in December 1996 by the Joint Commission which implemented the peace agreement. The Joint Commission endorsed the group's recommendations. However, the Division did not inform the Angolan public of its assessment of the human rights situation or whether or not the parties to the peace agreement complied with its recommendations.

Progress in the demobilization of troops was slow and thousands of unita soldiers deserted the quartering areas. The formation of the Forças Armadas Angolanas (faa), Angolan Armed Forces, ended in July with the incorporation of 10,899 unita troops, some 15,400 short of the total originally planned. In October unita demobilized 7,311 troops who had not previously been registered. More than 400 unita personnel were incorporated into the police force

The confinement to barracks of the 5,000-strong paramilitary Rapid Intervention Police (pir) was ended in October.

The extension of state authority to unita-controlled areas began in April, but broke down a few weeks later when political tension increased. In August unita, under international pressure, agreed to allow the process to resume. unita also agreed to provide details of its troop strength, including the previously unregistered diamond-mine police and Jonas Savimbi's bodyguard, and to turn its radio into a non-partisan station. It failed to complete these tasks and in October the UN imposed sanctions to forbid supply flights into unita areas and to prevent unita representatives from travelling or operating offices abroad.

The conflict in the former Zaire affected the security situation in Angola. The Angolan Government sent military assistance to the opposition coalition which overthrew the Zairian Government. unita troops backed former President Mobutu Sese Seko. In late April unita troops who had been based in Zaire and Rwandese refugees, including former soldiers, fled the fighting in Zaire and crossed into Angola. In May heavy fighting broke out in the diamond-mining areas in northeastern Angola between government troops, including 400 pir from nearby barracks, and unita forces. Clashes also occurred in other parts of the country. Both sides reportedly carried out forced conscription. Each accused the other of burning villages and killing unarmed civilians. At the end of the year 1,200,000 Angolans were internally displaced and 240,000 were refugees in neighbouring countries.

There was fighting in Cabinda, an Angolan enclave between the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly Zaire, where government forces faced armed factions of the Frente da Libertação do Enclave de Cabinda (flec), Cabinda Enclave Liberation Front. In October, thousands of government troops crossed from Cabinda into the Republic of the Congo, where both unita and flec factions had bases, and contributed to the overthrow of the government there

The criminal justice system remained ineffective in many areas. The level of corruption and violent crime remained high, and poorly trained and ill-disciplined police were involved in both. Prison conditions were harsh. The Ombudsman's Office, provided for in the Constitution, had not been established and few non-governmental groups were involved in exposing human rights violations

Roman Catholic priest Konrad Liebscher, who had been given a suspended one-year prison sentence in 1996 for carrying out an unauthorized demonstration (see Amnesty International Report 1997), had his conviction annulled in May. The Supreme Court found irregularities in the constitution of the court which tried him. It also determined that the act of driving a car bearing posters protesting against low salaries and other social problems did not constitute a demonstration

Severe beatings by police were commonplace. Few prosecutions were reported of those responsible for beatings and other ill-treatment, and rape. Sometimes beatings were politically motivated, but most were linked to extortion, corruption and indiscipline within the police forces.

In March a group of men, some in police uniform, stopped a car driven by Miguel Filho, Secretary General of sinprof, a teachers' union, and beat him. The men had been waiting for him to return from a meal with his guests, Norwegian participants in a trade union training seminar. They then drove off in Miguel Filho's car, taking with them one of the visitors whom they later released in another part of Luanda. Before this incident, Miguel Filho and other sinprof members had received threats to their physical safety because of their trade union activities.

Military police embarked on what appeared to be an intimidation campaign in Cabinda city in July. They went into schools making students flee in the belief that they were to be forcibly conscripted into the army. Some were arrested and beaten and had to pay bribes to be released. After a subsequent protest demonstration, at least four students were arrested and beaten

Other cases of ill-treatment by police included those of Inocêncio Victor, a civilian arrested and beaten by military police in January, and Lourenço Domingos dos Santos, a teacher, who was mistakenly arrested in March as an escaped prisoner and beaten. In June police arrested a young woman who had been selling ice near the Cathedral in Luanda. At the First Police Station they beat her for over 30 minutes with a piece of plastic hose-pipe. In October guests who spent three days at a hotel in Lubango heard the screams each day of someone being whipped in the next-door police station. In the same week, in Huambo a motorist saw police stop a passer-by, handcuff him and beat him on the head and shoulders with rifle butts, and in the Ilha area of Luanda, four police beat women market vendors and took their produce.

A commission of inquiry into the deaths of 10 unita members detained in Malange in November was seriously flawed. Twenty-three unita members had been arrested on suspicion of attempting to occupy the administrative offices in Kangandala district. They were placed in a cell with 32 other prisoners. A commission of inquiry set up by the Interior Ministry found that the deaths occurred as the result of a fight among the prisoners and not, as had been alleged, as a result of torture or asphyxia. No autopsies were carried out. The inquiry did not conform to international standards of independence and impartiality nor did it follow internationally established methods of operation

There were dozens of politically motivated killings and killings of suspected criminals by police and soldiers. In only one reported case was the suspected perpetrator arrested

Many of the killings occurred in mid-1997, when political tension increased throughout the country. Soldiers killed unarmed civilians and burned their villages, particularly in the northeast. unita alleged that government troops had killed a number of individuals, including two traditional leaders, Dionisio Cassenha and Chissundaki, who were killed in Chitembo, Bie province, in July

Three people who were reported to be unita supporters were killed and another injured in Huambo between June and August in attacks which appeared to be politically motivated. Detailed information on the killings and the identity of those responsible was not available, but there appeared to be no official investigations into these incidents. A former unita soldier who returned to Huambo in May was shot dead at close range several weeks later, as he arrived at his house in the São João area. A man known as Engenheiro Bango was shot and wounded near his home in June or July; he was reportedly subsequently shot dead while in hospital. José Luis Calúa, a taxi driver, was shot dead at close range by people waiting on the road where his passenger had asked him to stop. Another person survived an attempted killing. Virgílio Cavyli, who worked in the administration department of the Agronomic Research Institute, was shot through the jaw as he approached his house.

In Cabinda, suspected flec supporters were killed. Bernardo Kebeki was shot dead outside his home in Cabinda city by a man in plain clothes in August. A member of the security police arrested in connection with the death was later released uncharged. Following a flec attack in Cacongo district,soldiers reportedly arrested, beat, stabbed and shot dead Luís Nguba and Casimiro Dunge who had returned to the area after a hunting expedition

Other killings apparently carried out by police included that of Tito Tomé, a market vendor, in Sambizanga, Luanda. He had been giving protection money to a group of men dressed in police uniforms and nylon stocking masks. In October he refused to pay and one night three men in police uniforms came into his bedroom and shot him dead. No investigation of the killing was carried out by police or other authorities

Those responsible for the killings of Domingos Hungo, Ricardo Melo, and Adão da Silva in 1995 and António Casimiro in 1996 (see Amnesty International Report 1997) had not been brought to justice by the end of 1997

Scores of people were detained by unita during the year, according to reports received by the monua Human Rights Division. Further details also emerged of prisoners detained by unita in previous years, some of whom seemed to have "disappeared". They included Edith Santos, who was held in southeastern Angola until 1992, and João Baptista Sikato, a teacher who was arrested in Andulo in 1996 and accused of being a government supporter. Manuel Pelágio Muhongo, a former student in a Catholic seminary in Huambo, was arrested on his way to visit relatives in Bailundo, a unita stronghold, in July 1996. He apparently "disappeared" shortly afterwards. Several people were reportedly beaten by unita personnel. They included foreign aid workers, UN personnel and government officials. Deliberate and arbitrary killings attributed to unita included 26 people killed in August, reportedly because they had expressed satisfaction at the impending arrival of government administrators in Chicomba, Huila province. Their bodies were discovered in a well in September. In 1997 unita reportedly admitted responsibility for the killing near Sanza Pombo, Uige province, in 1994 of more than 50 faa soldiers they had captured in 1993

flec factions also carried out abuses. These included the abduction of two foreign forestry workers in February by flec-Forças Armadas de Cabinda (flec-fac), flec–Armed Forces of Cabinda, who initially threatened to execute the two men as government spies. They had not been freed by the end of the year.

In a report published in May, Angola: Reconciliation and human rights – Amnesty International's appeal to the new government, Amnesty International called for increased safeguards against human rights violations. The organization expressed concern about torture, ill-treatment and killings by police. It took up cases of human rights abuses by unita and appealed to flec-fac to release its hostages. It received no replies. In October, two Amnesty International delegates visited Angola to participate in a human rights training seminar for UN civilian police, and to carry out research.