Protest at raid on Angolan radio station

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has protested to the Angolan government over police action against journalists in Luanda last week for broadcasting excerpts of a BBC interview with the UNITA rebel leader Jonas Savimbi. In a letter sent to communications minister, Hendrik Vaal Neto on Tuesday, Ann Cooper, executive director of CPJ, said police with search and arrest warrants entered the offices of the independent broadcasting station, 'Radio Ecclesia', on 9 August and seized transmission equipment and the recording of the BBC interview. "They then arrested chief editor Paulo Juliao and two other 'Radio Ecclesia' journalists, Laurinda Tavares and Filipe Joaquim. The three men were held at DYNIC (police) headquarters for about four hours and were interrogated separately," Cooper said in the letter. "The interrogators accused them of 'disseminating dangerous information' and 'threatening public security', and questioned them about their political views. The next day, officers re-arrested Juliao along with Antonio Jaka, the director of 'Radio Ecclesia', and Emanuel da Mata, another journalist at the radio station after the interview was re-broadcast. She said a BBC journalist, Reginaldo da Silva, had been briefly questioned for passing the interview tape to 'Radio Ecclesia'. Three Angolan state television journalists were also interrogated on 10 August because their network had re-broadcast the same Savimbi interview, Cooper said. All the journalists were released later that day, but the authorities forced 'Radio Ecclesia' to sign an agreement that it would not refer to Jonas Savimbi or UNITA on the air without prior permission from the government. Cooper said the Savimbi broadcast was not an isolated incident. "Many Angolan journalists have told CPJ that the prevailing climate of harassment and repression makes them afraid to do their work," she said. The CPJ was "encouraged" by a letter from Neto in June saying the government would uphold press freedom in Angola, and urged him to "ensure that journalists in Angola are free to practice their profession without censorship or fear of reprisal".