TRC needed for Angola

A human rights organisation has called for the establishment of a South African-style Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to take forward Angola's peace process. With the country celebrating a ceasefire agreement that effectively ends a nearly three-decade long civil war, the Namibian based National Society for Human Rights (NSHR)on Friday called on the Angolan parliament to "seize the reconciliatory climate" and establish a TRC "to deal with atrocities" that may have been committed by the various combatants. On Wednesday the rebel group UNITA and the Angolan Army signed a ceasefire deal aimed at paving the way for adherence to the UN-brokered 1994 Lusaka Peace Accord. In a press release the NSHR said an Angolan TRC would deal with "atrocities committed by Portuguese colonialists, apartheid South African forces [that backed UNITA], Cuban forces, Angolan government forces, UNITA forces, the armed forces of the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA), as well as foreign mercenaries in [the] service of the Angolan government since 1993". The NSHR hoped the ceasefire agreement would lead to "formal and effective decolonisation and/or de-neocolonisation of Angola, leading to ownership and control of Angolan wealth and natural resources by the Angolan people for the benefit of all Angolans". "The wisdom and unanimity applied by the Angolan parliament in passing the blanket amnesty on 2 April 2002 should be applied in passing legislation establishing such a commission," NSHR executive director Phil ya Nangoloh said in the statement. "We are also calling upon the UNITA leadership in particular to ... help ensure that the plunder of Angolan natural resources has stopped, and that such resources are harnessed to improve the living standards of all the Angolan people ...[so that] national reconciliation will have a meaning in that country," he said.