Journalists allege state “terror”

The Angolan Journalists Union (SJA) on Monday alleged the existence of a “terror campaign” being waged against the private media and independent journalists in Angola, Lusa reported.

The SJA, Angola’s second biggest journalists union after the National Union of Angolan Journalists, also noted a “climate of political intolerance” fomented in the state newspaper ‘Jornal de Angola’. The Luanda-based daily had in a recent edition accused the independent station Radio Ecclesia of being an “instrument of subversion”. The Catholic station repudiated the charge last week, after suspending normal programming for 48 hours to proceed with an internal reorganisation.

In the latest incident, the police on Monday detained journalist and human rights activist Rafael Marques for approximately one hour. Marques was covering the government’s forced relocation of residents from the Boavista district of Luanda to a camp in Viana, approximately 40 km outside Luanda.