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Amnesty International Report 2003 - Angola

Covering events from January - December 2002

REPUBLIC OF ANGOLA
Head of state: José Eduardo dos Santos
Head of government: Fernando da Piedade Dias dos Santos (replaced Eduardo dos Santos in December)
Death penalty: abolitionist for all crimes
International Criminal Court: signed

Prospects for an end to the 27-year conflict between government forces and those of the União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola (UNITA), National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, improved when a cease-fire was agreed in April. This followed the death of UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi in a gun battle in February. Humanitarian aid was slow to reach former UNITA soldiers and their families as well as thousands of displaced people living in areas formerly under UNITA control. Human rights abuses were reported in the Cabinda enclave where conflict with armed separatists continued. Police carried out beatings and other human rights violations with impunity.

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Background

Following the April agreement both the government and UNITA expressed a firm commitment to peace. The agreement included a timetable for the quartering and disarmament of UNITA troops and provisions for completing other outstanding requirements of the 1994 Lusaka Protocol to the peace agreement of 1991.

In August, UNITA's military wing was formally disbanded. More than 100,000 former UNITA soldiers assembled in camps awaiting assistance to return to civilian life. Some returned to their homes but most remained in the camps at the end of the year. Five thousand other former UNITA soldiers were integrated into the Angolan armed forces and police. Some 30,000 weapons were collected from the quartered soldiers but many more were believed to remain in civilian hands in rural and urban areas.

In August the UN Mission in Angola (UNMA) replaced the UN Office in Angola (UNOA). The head of UNMA chaired the Joint Commission set up under the Lusaka Protocol to oversee the implementation of the peace process but this was replaced in November by a consultation body of government and UNITA representatives. UNMA's mandate included the promotion and protection of human rights, support for the reintegration of demobilized soldiers into civilian life and facilitating the delivery of humanitarian aid.

The two UNITA factions, UNITA-Renewed and the faction which had continued to support Jonas Savimbi, officially reunited as a political party. In December the UN Security Council voted to end sanctions against UNITA.

Civil society groups such as churches and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) contributed to the peace process, including through promoting human rights and peaceful conflict resolution. A government program to reunite families separated by war enabled people to broadcast messages on the national radio or to gather at a meeting point in Luanda to search for missing relatives or display their photographs. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) increased its tracing program.

The Angolan government helped to broker an agreement signed in Luanda in August for the withdrawal of Ugandan troops from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). In October the Angolan government declared that it had withdrawn the military force sent to the DRC in 1998 to support DRC government forces. In December it said that it had repatriated troops sent to the Republic of the Congo in 1997 to assist the forces of the current President, Denis Sassou Nguesso, against the then President, Pascal Lissouba, whom the Angolan government suspected of supporting UNITA.

In December the President appointed the former Interior Minister, Fernando da Piedade Dias dos Santos, as Prime Minister. The post of Prime Minister had been vacant since 1999.

Impunity for human rights violations and war crimes

An amnesty law was passed to accompany the April peace agreement. It provided immunity from prosecution for all crimes against the security of the state and military crimes committed within the context of the armed conflict. The law ruled out amnesties for military crimes resulting in death. The Angolan media reflected an angry public reaction to expressions of concern by representatives of the UN, AI and others that such laws provided impunity for human rights violations and war crimes. However, despite this and previous amnesty laws, there were calls for a process to reveal the truth about past human rights abuses including mass summary executions by both sides.

One person was handed over to face justice. Augustin Bizimungu, a former Rwandese army commander accused of complicity in the 1994 Rwanda genocide, was identified among over 600 foreign soldiers who had been fighting with UNITA. Angolan authorities arrested him in Moxico province in August on the basis of a warrant issued by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and transferred him to the custody of the Tribunal in Tanzania.

Forced displacement

During the last months of fighting, particularly in the east of the country, both sides allegedly burned houses and crops and forced civilians to transport looted goods. Some communities suffered repeated forced displacement. Many people died while fleeing attacks and most of those who reached the towns arrived in a critical condition. Government troops were said to have forcibly transported hundreds of people to towns in Moxico and Kwando Kubango provinces, where they lacked adequate access to shelter, water or sanitation. The April cease-fire revealed a further 600,000 civilians who had previously been inaccessible to aid organizations. Aid agencies gathered testimonies about forced displacement, rape and unlawful killings.

Inadequate delivery of humanitarian assistance to vulnerable groups

Forced displacement gave rise to a widespread humanitarian crisis which remained acute until June. Out of a total of about 4.4 million people displaced in 2002 and previous years, some 1.9 million remained heavily dependent on humanitarian aid. The delivery of food and other items to former UNITA soldiers, their families and the internally displaced was slow and inadequate.

The government experienced difficulties in providing sufficient humanitarian assistance to the quartering areas where the expected total of 50,000 former UNITA soldiers swelled to over 80,000. Camps in remote areas were most severely affected. UN agencies and non-governmental aid organizations assisted over 300,000 UNITA family members in addition to the internally displaced. The international community was slow to respond to urgent appeals for further funding but called on the government to increase financial transparency and to use its oil revenues to purchase humanitarian supplies. Aid agencies complained that the government was impeding aid shipments and deliveries through inefficient customs and other bureaucratic procedures and that some government officials harassed and intimidated aid workers. The destroyed transport infrastructure and the presence of millions of landmines also hindered the delivery of aid.

Cabinda

Fighting between government troops and armed factions of the Frente para a Libertação do Enclave de Cabinda (FLEC), Front for the Liberation of the Cabinda Enclave, escalated, particularly in the northern part of the enclave, after government forces received substantial reinforcements in October.

There were numerous allegations of human rights abuses but it was difficult to obtain independent corroboration. FLEC sources reported indiscriminate bombardments and land attacks on villages and makeshift camps in the forest to which hundreds of civilians had fled. They said that during these attacks scores of unarmed civilians including women and children were killed and homes were looted and burned. They also reported that soldiers raped women and girls, sometimes in front of family members.

Soldiers, paramilitary police and security officers reportedly arbitrarily detained dozens of civilians suspected of assisting FLEC. In November soldiers were said to have arrested unarmed civilians in various villages to the east and south of Cabinda city and held them, without regard to required legal procedures, in an army base in Tando Zinze. Other suspected FLEC supporters were arrested in Cabinda city.

• Ivo Macaia, a 44-year-old oil-company worker, was arrested without a warrant in Cabinda city in November by men in plain clothes. A few weeks previously, paramilitary police had questioned him on suspicion that he was a member of FLEC. After his arrest, paramilitary police reportedly handed him over to military police who questioned him about FLEC's military bases. He was subsequently said to have been taken to the village of Prata where he was held for five days in a hole full of water. In late December military police took him to his home, which they searched, and then took him away again. His whereabouts were unknown at the end of the year.

In December, members of the Coalition for Reconciliation, Transparency and Citizenship, an NGO, published a report on Cabinda detailing dozens of allegations of arbitrary arrest, torture, rape, and extrajudicial executions in 2002 and previous years.

FLEC factions were also reported to have attacked unarmed civilians and carried out other human rights abuses.

• The FLEC-Renovada (FLEC-Renewed) faction was said to have captured a government soldier who was drawing water from a river near Champuto Rico village in late July and to have deliberately killed him a week later. In response to the killing, government soldiers allegedly carried out a reprisal action against the village. They were reported to have kicked a 13-year-old girl in the stomach, beat other villagers with their fists and guns and subjected one to a mock execution. A dozen victims were subsequently taken to hospital.

Violations by police

Police were unable to respond adequately to the high level of violent crime which was particularly rife in densely populated urban areas where unemployment was the norm and weapons were freely available. Many suspected criminals reportedly used police or military uniforms to gain access to properties. Despite appeals by NGOs and its obligations under the Lusaka Protocol, the government did not institute a comprehensive program to collect weapons in civilian hands.

The most frequently reported abuses concerned police on patrol in towns and rural areas who resorted to beatings or other human rights violations when victims refused, or were unable, to pay bribes. Police reportedly raped or otherwise sexually assaulted women and girls. In rural areas, both military personnel and police demanded bribes at control posts. There were also reports of torture in police stations. The authorities claimed that police officers who disobeyed regulations or laws were dismissed or tried, but most perpetrators of human rights violations were not brought to justice.

• Two men (names withheld) said they were tortured in a police station in a Luanda suburb in August after being arrested on suspicion of illegal possession of a pistol. Two police officers beat them using batons and the flat side of a cutlass blade. The detainees were then ordered to remove their shoes and received blows on the toes with a hoe. The hoe had a protruding nail which caused deep lacerations. Senior police officers were alerted after the detainees smuggled a note out of the police station. The detainees subsequently received some medical attention and were released without charge after eight days in custody. The allegations of torture were under police investigation at the end of the year.

Police were reported to have used disproportionate or unnecessary force on several occasions. In one case, the police authorities reportedly opened an inquiry after officers allegedly beat at least five university students during a demonstration in Luanda in October. However, the results of the inquiry were not made public by the end of the year.

• Rogério Ndunzi, aged 13, was shot dead by a police officer in Cabinda city in July. He was reportedly test-driving a car after helping his father to repair it when two police officers ordered him to stop. According to the boy's father, who was a passenger in the car, his son had been unable to stop before one of the police officers shot at the car, hitting the boy in the back of the head. The police reportedly held no inquiry into this incident.

In January, October and December police were said to have used excessive force while accompanying teams of workers sent by the authorities to confiscate land and demolish houses in different parts of Luanda. Demolitions were reportedly carried out without the legally required notice and without consideration or compensation for those in occupation.

• In December police arrested eight residents of Golfe II, a Luanda suburb, and allegedly beat three of them with batons. Police claimed that they had resisted the demolition of their houses. On the same day, Maos Livres (Free Hands), an NGO, helped secure the release without charge of seven of the detainees. The eighth, who had sustained a broken arm, was released without charge three days later. He and one other victim of beatings submitted a complaint to the police about their treatment, but had received no response by the end of the year.