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Angola is making news for all the wrong reasons. There are growing allegations that Angolan security forces killed hundreds of people, said to be members of a religious sect, during unrest in Huambo province in which nine police officers were killed – a claim the government has vigorously denied.

No international investigators have yet managed to access the area to confirm or refute the allegations. Perhaps an intrepid Angolan reporter or activist will find a way to collect evidence of what really happened in Huambo.

But it won’t be Angola’s most prominent journalist and human rights defender, Rafael Marques de Morais. He is preparing his defense against a politically motivated prosecution. On May 14, he will be in court in the capital Luanda defending himself against a litany of criminal defamation charges.

The charges stem from Marques’ 2011 book, Blood Diamonds: Corruption and Torture in Angola, which explained how Angolan military officials and private security companies killed and terrorized Angolan villagers to protect lucrative diamond mining operations. The book describes 500 cases of torture and 100 killings by private security guards and Angolan soldiers in the districts of Cuango and Xá-Muteba.

Just after his book was published, Marques filed a criminal complaint in Luanda accusing nine Angolan generals of crimes against humanity in connection with diamond mining. In response, seven of the generals and some of their fellow board members of two diamond companies, Sociedade Mineira do Cuango (SMC) and ITM-Mining, filed a number of lawsuits against Marques, alleging criminal defamation. Their lawsuit in Portugal, where Marques’ book was published, was dismissed for lack of evidence. 

Nonetheless, the Angolan attorney-general has allowed the generals’ case in Angola to proceed. Meanwhile Angola’s government has failed to act on Marques’ original complaint: there have been no investigations of the killings and torture detailed in his book.

Politically motivated prosecutions don’t get much clearer than this. The authorities are using criminal defamation laws to threaten Marques with imprisonment, which is a harsh and disproportionate punishment simply for exercising free speech. At some level it’s testament to the power of Marques’ work that Angolan officials apparently feel they must go to such extreme – and unlawful – lengths to silence him.  

Marques could face a steep price for his courage: up to nine years in prison. But the biggest cost of this trial falls on the people of Angola, who continue to suffer from corruption and crimes at the hands of Angola’s political and military elite.

 

 

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