VIII. Ongoing Armed Insurgency and Intimidation in Cabinda

In Cabinda, ongoing low-intensity activities of the armed insurgency, and the government's efforts to contain the insurgency and close down space for the local civil society movement for self-determination, negatively affected the political climate for elections there.[129] Human Rights Watch found that despite a relatively calm campaign period in August 2008, the political climate has not improved there since.

The armed separatist FLEC guerrilla movement has been fighting for the Cabinda enclave's independence since 1975. After 2002 the Angolan Armed Forces launched several military operations in Cabinda that considerably weakened the guerrilla movement. In August 2006 the government signed a Memorandum of Understanding for Peace and Reconciliation in Cabinda with a faction of FLEC represented in the Cabindan Forum for Dialogue (FCD) and rewarded its members with a number of government posts. Members of political parties and civil society told Human Rights Watch the 2006 peace agreement has enjoyed little credibility, however, because the government has not made significant political concessions, and influential parts of local civil society were excluded from the talks. The armed insurgency has continued.

Aside from the FLEC, the independence movement has been based on civil society, rather than political parties, as locally- and regionally-based parties and calls for secession are prohibited by Angolan law.[130] Thus, the local Roman Catholic clergy in 1992 backed FLEC's successful call for a boycott of the elections in Cabinda and in 2005 local civil society and church representatives formed part of the Cabindan Forum for Dialogue created as a joint ad hoc commission with FLEC to establish peace talks with the Angolan government. However, the Angolan constitution does not make a clear distinction between peaceful and armed movements calling for secession.[131] International human rights law, although permitting governments to take action against opposition groups using violence, does not allow the banning of political parties because they are regionally based or solely because they peacefully support autonomy or even secession.[132] In November 2006 the authorities banned a public debate on an autonomy statute promoted by the opposition party Frente para a Democracia (FpD) under the allegation that this constituted an "attempt to subvert the constitutional order." In August 2007 a court sentenced an FpD representative to five months' imprisonment suspended for two years for "insubordination and incitement of violence" for attempting to distribute a news release supporting autonomy.[133]

In recent years the Angolan government has increasingly used security concerns to crack down on the peaceful civil society pro-independence movement and restrict freedom of expression, assembly, and association. In 2006 the government banned the civic association and human rights organization Mpalabanda, alleging it had incited violence. An appeal against the ban has been pending since, but the organization's former members complained to Human Rights Watch about continued harassment by the authorities. For example, José Marcos Mavungo, human rights activist and former Mpalabanda deputy president, told Human Rights Watch he has not been able to travel out of the country since the Migration Services confiscated his passport at Cabinda airport in July 2007, but he has not been informed of any judicial proceedings against him.[134]

Police have also regularly intimidated and arrested individuals belonging to church groups protesting against the new Roman Catholic bishop appointed by the Vatican in 2005, with the justification that the police were protecting the bishop from threats allegedly coming from these groups.[135] The new bishop has close family links to MPLA elites, and his appointment has been fiercely contested by influential sectors within the local clergy.

Human Rights Watch found that in the months before the 2008 elections, levels of surveillance and intimidation of opposition politicians, journalists, and individuals from church and civil society groups favoring self-determination and opposing the terms of the 2006 peace agreement have been particularly high in Cabinda.[136]

In September's elections, voter turnout in Cabinda was high-despite some divisions within civil society on whether to participate or abstain, and FLEC's call for a boycott. UNITA achieved its best election results in Cabinda, where it won 31 per cent of the vote, despite irregularities of the kind mentioned in Chapter V. This result was mainly due to UNITA's promises to consider autonomy for the enclave within the constitutional review process, and because it ran candidates from local civil society who had been leaders of Mpalabanda.

During the election campaign the environment for political parties appeared to be relatively calm. Opposition party officials told Human Rights Watch they had experienced fewer problems during the campaign than before. For example, the FpD campaigned under the slogan "vote for autonomy of Cabinda," despite the previous conviction of its representative for expressing his party's view on the matter.[137]

However, police pressure on church groups perceived as dissident continued throughout the campaign. On August 23 the police briefly detained five catechists of the dissident Catholic movement Lumbundunu, to prevent them from holding a public religious ceremony. They were released after a week, without charge. This happened despite alleged orders from the police commander to abstain from arrests in Cabinda city during the election campaign "in order to avoid damage to the image of the government," as a human rights activist told Human Rights Watch. A member of the group told Human Rights Watch the provincial Sinfo delegate had threatened him in May 2008, saying, "We are going to prove that you organize political activities."[138]

The early presence in Cabinda of international long-term observers from the European Union may have contributed to government efforts to temporarily reduce ostentatious surveillance by police and Sinfo agents. However, international observers abstained from observing elections further north than the surrounding area of Cabinda city for security concerns, due to reports of ongoing armed attacks from the FLEC. This left the most sensitive areas in the north unmonitored by international observers.[139] Local journalists, human rights activists, and priests described the situation in the northern border regions to Human Rights Watch as "unpredictable," especially since FLEC had called for an election boycott.[140]

Since the elections, the clampdown against civilians accused of "crimes against the security of the state" has continued. On September 16-one week after the election-the former Voice of America correspondent Fernando Lelo was sentenced to 12 years' imprisonment for "crimes against the security of the state" and acts of rebellion allegedly committed together with four soldiers of the Angolan Armed Forces. He had been tried in May by a military court that did not produce evidence of the charges against him. Local human rights activists and journalists told Human Rights Watch that Lelo's conviction had been deliberately delayed until after the elections, in order to prevent popular unrest or damage to the MPLA's election campaign in Cabinda.[141] The arbitrariness of Lelo's detention and denial of a fair trial raises concerns about what will happen with another 14 civilians who have been in pretrial detention for "crimes against the security of the state" since their arrest between December 2007 and April 2008. Human Rights Watch has documented that these civilians, and the soldiers co-accused with Fernando Lelo, have been beaten and tortured in military custody.[142] A lawyer confirmed to Human Rights Watch that in October 2008 another seven civilians were arrested in Cabinda and across the border in the Democratic Republic of Congo, accused of crimes against the security of the state, and were being held under the same detention conditions in Cabinda.[143]

Since the elections the authorities have also continued to impose arbitrary travel restrictions on individuals in Cabinda. From October 15 to early December 2008, the Catholic priest Pedro Sevo Agostinho was prevented from leaving Angola after a short visit to Cabinda from Spain, where he had been studying. The Migration Services gave no explanation for confiscating his passport, which was eventually returned to him.[144]