American rapper Nicki Minaj. Credit: Shutterstock / Tinseltown
As far as reasons to lambast or draw controversy from the head of state in Angola go, you’d expect his taste in music to be some way down the rather long list. But this isn’t necessarily the case. Tomorrow, American rapper Nicki Minaj will sing at a Christmas festival for President José Eduardo dos Santos, in the process risking lending legitimacy to a regime criticised for widespread human rights abuses.
With no signs of cancellation, here are five ways in which free expression is curbed in dos Santos’ Angola.
1. American rappers are welcome; Angolan rappers are not
Dos Santos’ love of rap is selective. While Nicki Minaj is welcomed with open arms, Angolan rapper Luaty Beirao, also known by his stage name Ikonoklasta, arrested on charges of rebellion, will be coming to terms with his house arrest. Beiro has recently ended a five-week hunger strike.
MCK, another Angolan rapper known for his activism in Angola, was barred from leaving the country in November by the immigration services. MCK was on his way to perform at a rap festival in Brazil on the invitation of Rafael Marques de Morais when he was stopped at Luanda’s International Airport.
2. Organising a book club can get you arrested…
It isn’t just rap the country’s leaders take aim at, but literature too. In June, 17 Angolan activists including Ikonoklasta were arrested and later put on trial on accusations of planning a rebellion against the country’s government. The reason for their arrest was a book club meeting in which they discussed peaceful protest and Gene Sharp’s book From Dictatorship to Democracy. Protest and democracy are topics that are out of bounds in dos Santos’ Angola, it would seem.
A new documentary called It Is Forbidden to Talk tells the story of those arrested. During the 25 days it took to shoot the film, its creators were also targeted and attacked by Angolan authorities, and had to seek protection from the Brazilian embassy.
3. …writing books can too
If reading subversive literature can land you in trouble, you better believe writing it can too. In May 2015, Angolan investigative journalist and Index on Censorship award-winner Rafael Marques de Morais was handed down a six-month suspended sentence in Luanda. His crime was to write about the killings and torture that takes place in Angola’s diamond fields.
4. Going to a non-official church could mean death
On 16 April, police and defence forces killed scores of pilgrims on Mount Sumi, in Angola’s central highlands, to avenge the deaths of eight police officers, allegedly at the hands of members of a Christian sect known as the Seventh Day in the Light of the World. The tragedy was not widely reported and underscores the extent of government control of the flow of information in Angola.
5. Planning a peaceful protest lands you a six year sentence
In September 2015, human rights activist Jose Marcos Mavungo was given a six-year prison sentence for attempting to hold a peaceful protest on 14 March. Mavungo is a former member of Mpalabanda, a group that was banned after it highlighted rights abuses by security forces in the province. Mavungo’s jailing was a travesty of justice and shows the blatant disregard for basic human rights in Angola.
Documentary It Is Forbidden to Talk in Angola tells the story of the 15 young adults who were accused of planning a rebellion against the government of José Eduardo Dos Santos for taking part in a book club. It is released for the first time with English subtitles by Index in conjunction with Brazil’s award-winning investigative journalists Agencia Publica.
Filmed over 25 days by award-winning journalists Natalia Viana and Eliza Capai from Agencia Publica, It Is Forbidden to Talk in Angola tells the story of the young rappers and activists who are being tried for reading a book by US Nobel Prize nominee Gene Sharp, called From Dictatorship to Democracy, A Conceptual Framework for Liberation.
The activists are facing trial on charges of “preparing acts of rebellion and plotting against the president and state institutions”, which are considered crimes against the security of the Angolan state. If found guilty they could face heavy prison sentences of up to 12 years. Some of the 15 jailed activists were kept in pre-trial detention for 177 days, exceeding the 90 days allowed by Angolan law.
The activists were told on 15 December that they would be sent home and placed under house arrest, according to MakaAngola.org.
Some of the jailed activists went on hunger strike to protest their arrest and detention. Rapper Henrique Luaty Beirão ended his hunger strike on October 27, after 36 days, following requests by his family and friends. He remains in serious condition.
Viana and Capai met several members of Central Angola, a community journalist and activist website whose members have received threats, have been beaten and are constantly surveilled by the security services of the Angolan government. Laurinda Gouveia, a 26-year old philosophy student, told the interviewers how she was beaten with metal bars for two hours in November 2014 for filming a small protest against the government.
“I felt their anger when the police beat me up. They kept saying: ‘You shouldn’t get involved in this, you are a woman, you should think about having a husband and a family… By the way we are beating you up, you will not be able to have babies’,” Gouveia told the journalists.
Following the interview, Gouveia was included in the state prosecutor’s investigation and is now on trial with her colleagues.
Viana and Capai also interviewed rapper Beirão’s family, after which the two journalists were targeted by Angolan authorities. Five days later, while in a public square during an event to mark the president’s birthday, the journalists said they were attacked by two members of the security forces. Disguised as “thieves”, the individuals stole the journalists’ equipment. Shaken, the two sought protection from the Brazilian embassy.
It Is Forbidden to Talk in Angola is a first-hand account of how Dos Santos’ regime works to intimidate anyone who questions his power, and it is released here for the first time with English subtitles.
Agencia Publica is a non-profit investigative journalism organisation that seeks to provide non-partisan reporting in the public interest on Brazilian and Latin American issues.
A graffiti artist who paints murals in war-torn Yemen, a jailed Bahraini academic and the Ethiopia’s Zone 9 bloggers are among those honoured in this year’s #Index100 list of global free expression heroes.
Selected from public nominations from around the world, the #Index100 highlights champions against censorship and those who fight for free expression against the odds in the fields of arts, journalism, activism and technology and whose work had a marked impact in 2015.
Those on the long list include Chinese human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang, Angolan journalist Sedrick de Carvalho, website Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently and refugee arts venue Good Chance Calais. The #Index100 includes nominees from 53 countries ranging from Azerbaijan to China to El Salvador and Zambia, and who were selected from around 500 public nominations.
“The individuals and organisations listed in the #Index100 demonstrate courage, creativity and determination in tackling threats to censorship in every corner of globe. They are a testament to the universal value of free expression. Without their efforts in the face of huge obstacles, often under violent harassment, the world would be a darker place,” Index on Censorship CEO Jodie Ginsberg said.
Those in the #Index100 form the long list for the Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards to be presented in April. Now in their 16th year, the awards recognise artists, journalists and campaigners who have had a marked impact in tackling censorship, or in defending free expression, in the past year. Previous winners include Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, Argentina-born conductor Daniel Barenboim and Syrian cartoonist Ali Ferzat.
A shortlist will be announced in January 2016 and winners then selected by an international panel of judges. This year’s judges include Nobel Prize winning author Wole Soyinka, classical pianist James Rhodes and award-winning journalist María Teresa Ronderos. Other judges include Bahraini human rights activist Nabeel Rajab, tech “queen of startups” Bindi Karia and human rights lawyer Kirsty Brimelow QC.
The winners will be announced on 13 April at a gala ceremony at London’s Unicorn Theatre.
The awards are distinctive in attempting to identify individuals whose work might be little acknowledged outside their own communities. Judges place particular emphasis on the impact that the awards and the Index fellowship can have on winners in enhancing their security, magnifying the impact of their work or increasing their sustainability. Winners become Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards Fellows and are given support for the year after their fellowship on one aspect of their work.
“The award ceremony was aired by all community radios in northern Kenya and reached many people. I am happy because it will give women courage to stand up for their rights,” said 2015’s winner of the Index campaigning award, Amran Abdundi, a women’s rights activist working on the treacherous border between Somalia and Kenya.
Each member of the long list is shown on an interactive map on the Index website where people can find out more about their work. This is the first time Index has published the long list for the awards.
For more information on the #Index100, please contact [email protected] or call 0207 260 2665.
The resolution calls for the release of all political prisoners and human rights defenders and highlights the case of José Marcos Mavungo, at that time on trial in Cabinda province for the crime of rebellion. Mr. Mavungo was organising a peaceful protest, but the government alleges he was involved with the handling of explosives and leaflets along with other individuals. Despite providing no evidence at trial to connect him with the persons or explosives, and that these men with explosives whom Mr. Mavungo is accused of associating with were not brought to trial, he was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison and to the payment of 50 000 Kwanzas legal fees (approx. US$400) on 14 September. Amnesty International considers him to be a prisoner of conscience.
The resolution further notes the increasing shrinking space for freedoms of expression, assembly and association through arrests, instrumentalisation of the judiciary system to repress dissent by criminally prosecuting individuals for exercising these rights, and the use of violence by security forces to repress peaceful public gatherings. All of these concerns have been documented many times by human rights, civil society and other organisations from within Angola and elsewhere in Africa as well as internationally.
The EP resolution also calls for action from the European Union (EU) and its member states to deliver on their commitments to support and protect human rights defenders worldwide through concrete and visible measures.
In a vote of 550 in favor, with 14 opposed and 60 abstentions, a strong statement regarding these escalations became part of the official parliamentary record.
We, the undersigned national and international organisations, strongly support the resolution by the European Parliament on the Human Rights Situation in Angola. We believe that this resolution underlines the urgent need for action in response to the escalating human rights violations in Angola.
It will be crucial for the EU, its member states and other international actors to provide timely political and material support to Angolan human rights defenders, their lawyers and families and to engage the Angolan authorities on human rights at all levels of relations, including all political, trade and development relations.
We urge the Angolan government to fully implement the measures called for in the resolution including by ending continuing human rights violations, immediately releasing all detained political prisoners, respecting the rights of citizens to enjoy their rights to freedom of expression and assembly, and engaging positively in dialogue with the European Parliament about the very serious human rights issues detailed in the resolution.
The organisations are (in alphabetical order):
Amnesty International
Angola-Roundtable of German Non-Governmental Organizations
Front Line Defenders
Index on Censorship
International Press Institute
International Service for Human Rights
Liberdade Já
OMUNGA
Organização Humanitária Internacional
PEN American Center
Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights
Southern Africa Litigation Centre
Transparência e Integridade, Associação Cívica
Transparency International
World Organisation Against Torture
