The Portuguese branch of the Anonymous collective of computer hackers says that its members have hacked into various official websites of the Angolan government in disgust at the sentences handed out to 17 members of a Luandan book club.
The collective says it shut down 20 government websites after the activists were jailed for plotting a so-called rebellion.
One of the young men is a well-known local rapper Luaty Beirão, who was sentenced alongside his fellow protestors on Monday. They received between two and eight-and-a-half years, “an affront to justice” according to Amnesty International observers.
Anonymous Portugal’s Facebook page listed the government websites it had hacked into and shut down, stating, “The real criminals are outside, defended by the capitalist system that increasingly spreads in the minds of the weak.”
Beirão holds dual Portuguese and Angolan nationality and has many fans in Portugal.
Amnesty has demanded the immediate release of the activists, 15 of whom were detained during a book club meeting in the capital Luanda in June 2015. The jailed youths insist they are peaceful campaigners lobbying for President José dos Santos to step down.
“Angolan authorities use the criminal justice system to silence dissenting views,” said Deprose Muchena, Director of Amnesty’s Southern Africa’s regional office. All 17 have been adopted as “prisoners of conscience” by Amnesty International.
“The activists have been wrongly convicted in a deeply-politicised trial. They are the victims of a government determined to intimidate anyone who dares to question its repressive policies.”
Around 30 protesters demonstrated outside the court shouting “free the youths, arrest dictator José Eduardo dos Santos” the 73-year-old president of Angola since 1979 who announced last month that he is winding down towards possible retirement in 2018, but has announced similar moves in the past so his statement lacks credibility.
The associated protestors were taking a risk, with one man who shouted “This judgement is a joke” inside the court room being handed a sentence of eight months in jail.
Portugal’s parliament voted yesterday on a move to condemn the jail sentences handed out in Angola but the motion was kicked out.
The leader of the CDS-PP justified the rejection of the motion to condemn the situation surrounding the Angolan activists with the need for ‘separation of powers,’ i.e Portugal should not be meddling in the legal system of another country, conveniently avoiding the issue that a parliamentary expression of opinion is not a threat to the Angolan legal system.
CDS-PP party leader Assunção Cristas said "I would have voted otherwise, but I must tell you that when we look at legal cases we must be wary of a cornerstone of democracy which is the separation of powers. We, in Parliament, exercise legislative power. It is not up to us to review court proceedings whether in Portugal or in another country."
The United States was less subservient and considered that the harsh sentences imposed on the Angolan activists were a threat to freedom of expression and appealed to the Angolan government to defend the constitutional rights of its citizens.
"The United States believes that the harsh sentences imposed this week by an Angolan court against the activists threatens the exercise of the freedom of expression and peaceful assembly," read an opinion from the US Department of State, urging Luanda to promote a peaceful, public and open debate on the subject.
The Albert Einstein Institution has strongly condemned the men’s trial, as has the Human Rights Foundation in New York, which called on the Angolan government “to vacate the convictions and release the activists immediately.”
The US has less to lose from condemning Angola while Portugal’s trade links consistently push Portugal’s government into accepting behaviour that would not be acceptable in its home territories.
The Portuguese psyche still imagines it runs the former colony, freed after a bloody, 13-year war which ended in 1974, with the Angolan president’s daughter owning large chunks of some of Portugal’s best known companies claiming she is a billionaire in her own right and that her impressive accumulation of wealth has nothing to do with her father’s position as President for life, nor is she laundering money diverted from the Angolan exchequer.
“The Angolan authorities always proclaimed to have caught this group ‘red-handed’ in their crime. That crime was reading a book,” said Vicky Baker, deputy editor of Index , the Index on Censorship’s magazine. “Evidence was so scant of the alleged coup-plotting that those charges had to be dropped. It is absurd and tragic that these young men have been convicted of rebellion and must now see out jail terms.
“This has been another sham trial, similar to the one we saw last year with Rafael [Marques de Morais], who was convicted of defamation after writing a brave and much-needed exposé of the country’s blood diamond industry.”
Monday marks the 14th anniversary of the end of Angola’s 26-year civil war which began after independence from Portugal.
José Eduardo dos Santos, worth an estimated $20bn, has been president since 1979 and has been accused of presiding over one of the world’s most corrupt regimes, amassing a fortune for himself, his family and friends while two thirds of his country lives below the poverty line.
