Govt denies Cabinda rights abuses

The Angolan government has once again denied claims of rights abuses in the northern enclave of Cabinda. General Egidio Sousa Santos, deputy chief of staff, this week told the state news agency, Angop, that "information given to certain media bodies about soldiers in active service maltreating the people of Cabinda was unfounded". The campaign of misinformation, Sousa Santos said, was apparently being conducted by "local Cabinda circles", and aimed to disparage the "good name and image of FAA (Angola's army)". "In several parts of the world it is being said that the soldiers in Cabinda maltreat the people, rape and kill them. But in reality that is not happening. What is actually happening is that the soldiers are fighting against [rebel] FLEC [Front for the Liberation of the Cabindan Enclave] members," Sousa Santos explained. Overshadowed by the decades-long war against UNITA in mainland Angola, ongoing hostilities between separatists and the government in Cabinda went largely ignored. However, since the end of the civil war in April 2002, the troubled province has drawn attention from regional and international media. After a counter-insurgency campaign launched against the rebel movement by the FAA in October 2002, news reports from Cabinda have highlighted allegations of rights abuses. The Catholic church in particular has drawn attention to the impact of the fighting on civilians. A recent report, "A Year of Pain", co-authored by civil rights activists and a number of influential church leaders, contained 30 pages of testimony of alleged abuses, including murders, disappearances, arbitrary detentions and torture, allegedly carried out largely by the FAA. Civil rights activist Rafael Marques told IRIN on Wednesday that, contrary to the government's denials, the FAA had increased its operations in the province against civilians "in the absence of specific guerrilla movement" targets. Observers have pointed to the unravelling of FLEC after the 2002 counter-offensive, which saw some 40,000 FAA soldiers stationed in the oil-rich province. "There is a clear military administration in Cabinda, in which civilian authorities have only control of the resources allocated to them, but no effective rule of the territory," Marques said. He appealed to the international community to acknowledge the extent of the alleged abuses in Cabinda, and to bring those responsible to account. Cabinda, divided from the rest of Angola by a sliver of the Democratic Republic of Congo, produces more than 60 percent of Angola's oil. For more details see IRIN web special