Rights activists call for greater transparency

Rights activists in Angola have accused the authorities of riding roughshod over civil liberties after demonstrators this week were prevented from staging a protest against alleged government graft. According to the protest organisers, police on Tuesday cordoned off access to the venue for the demonstration, a central square in the capital, Luanda. "When we turned up for the demonstration the police turned us away - we were not even allowed to get out of our cars. In the areas surrounding the square there were hundreds of police, whose presence had frightened many people," Carlos Leitao, president of the Angolan Party for Democratic Progress (PADEPA) told IRIN. Leitao said PADEPA, a small opposition party, had obtained the required authorisation from the provincial government to hold the protest. Demonstrators were calling for President Eduardo Dos Santos to launch an investigation into allegations raised by Human Rights Watch (HRW) in January that US $4 billion in state oil revenue had disappeared from government coffers from 1997 to 2002. The New York-based rights group called on the government to publish all the "Oil Diagnostic" reports, conduct audits of the state-owned oil company, Sonangol, and participate fully in international initiatives to promote transparency. In 2001 Global Witness alleged the misappropriation of US $1 billion annually from Angola's state coffers over the previous two years. Authorities in Luanda denied the allegations of corruption and said both reports were flawed. "We are concerned that the government continues to ignore these allegations. If they are conducting themselves correctly, why have we not been presented with the facts? We want to see where the resources of our country are going," said Leitao. Rafael Marques, the Angolan representative of the pro-democracy NGO, Open Society, said the clampdown had set a "bad precedent" as the country moved towards its first post-civil war elections. "If the government forbids people to exercise their right to demonstrate, which is enshrined in the constitution, how then are citizens going to express their dissatisfaction with government policies in the future? We hoped that there would be more freedom now that the war is over, but we are still lagging behind in entrenching human rights," Marques commented.