Angolan president Jose Eduardo dos Santos unveiled his cabinet following last month's landmark legislative poll on Wednesday, state media reported. Angola's ruling MPLA party secured a landslide election victory last month, setting stage for changes that critics fear could make presidency even more powerful and weaken other institutions.

Angolan authorities files legal action to close down the Angolan non-profit AJPD – Association for Justice, Peace and Democracy. AJPD is one of the non-profits which are most committed to the development of culture of human right in the country. The State relies the lawsuit on unconstitutional arguments and invalid proceedings. AJPD CANNOT BE ELIMINATED!

Angolan authorities filed legal action to close down the Angolan non-profit AJPD – Association for Justice, Peace and Democracy. AJPD is one of the non-profits most committed to the development of culture of human right in the country. The State's lawsuit is based on unconstitutional arguments and invalid proceedings.

AJPD CANNOT BE SHUT DOWN!

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

1) Send a message to [email][email protected] showing your solidarity. The messages will be printed and delivered to Angolan authorities that do not have an email adress. Suggestion of writing: “Such an active civil society organization towards the practice of human rights in Angola cannot be closed down! Let AJPD keep doing its work!

2) Contact the diplomats of your country in Angola and ask them to express to the Angolan government their solidarity to AJPD. This kind of support has borught great success in the past. Suggestion of writing: “Dear Mr./Mrs., the Angolan government is threatening to close by judicial means AJPD – Association for Justice, Peace and Democracy-, one of the most active human rights non-profits in Angola. I ask you to please express your solidarity of our country to the NGO, once the lawsuit contains unvalid proceedings and unconstitutional arguments. AJPD has shown for several times its commitment to democracy and fundamental rights.”

Here at the link below, please find more information on the case.

Angola's electoral commission has rejected appeals from the country's main opposition party to challenge election results on grounds of "voting irregularities" at polling stations. "The claims of Unita are not accompanied by any proof," Adao de Almeida, a spokesman for the national electoral commission, said in the Luanda province on Monday.

Angola’s parliamentary elections on September 5, 2008, reportedly won by the ruling MPLA party, were marred by numerous irregularities, Human Rights Watch has said. Preliminary results indicate that the MPLA won more than 80 percent of the vote, the first held in Angola since 1992.

Angola opposition Unita on Friday contested at the Constitutional Court landmark elections in the capital, Luanda, where chaos resulted in a second day of voting last week. The former rebel movement last week accepted the result of nationwide parliamentary elections, with the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) guaranteed a large victory.

At the first sound of nighttime rain on the scrap-metal roof of her shack, Ines Monteiro wakes her husband and four children. She hustles them from the two beds they share, out into their metre-wide yard. And they stand there, for as long as the rain falls – sometimes as many seven hours. In daytime rains, they stand out, too: their house is perched on the sideof a mountain of garbage – of plastic bags, empty bottles, crushed boxes, scraps of food.

The election was held on 5-6 September 2008. Originally scheduled for the 5 September only, voting was extended to the 6 September as a result of delays caused by logistical problems.

Have no doubt. Only one party can win Angola's parliamentary elections next Friday and that is the MPLA, the party of government since independence in 1975. More difficult to predict is whether or not it will win an absolute majority and, even harder, how the remainder of the vote will split. Beyond the MPLA's former civil-war enemy Unita, the Angolan opposition tends to be ignored as small parties only in the game for money and prestige.

Voting is taking place in Angola in the first parliamentary polls for 16 years. Although 14 parties are taking part, the contest is primarily between long-term rivals, the ruling MPLA party and opposition Unita party.

Angola overtook Nigeria this year as Africa’s largest, and the world’s eighth largest, oil producer—a combination of Angola’s surge in growth and Nigeria’s decline in production following rebel attacks on its oilfields. Angola is now producing over 1.9 million barrels per day (bpd) of high-quality crude oil from onshore and near-shore fields, up from 900,000 bpd in 2002 and from 500,000 bpd in 1993.

Nearly a third of candidates in Angola's upcoming parliamentary elections are female, thanks to a new quota imposed by the government. The 30 percent rule was designed to bring more women into the country's parliament, but as campaigning gets under way, women continue to stay in Angola's political shadows, barely visible at rallies and with few holding senior party positions.

Intimidation of opposition parties and the media ahead of parliamentary elections in Angola, as well as interference in the electoral commission, threaten prospects for a free and fair vote in September, Human Rights Watch has said.

A plenary of Angola's National Electoral Commission (CNE) has approved a model of ballot paper ahead of the country's September legislative elections. CNE's Spokesperson, Adão de Almeida, announced that the introduction of the model ballot paper is in line with the graphic characteristics of the law.

The seizure of farmland for the purposes of commercial diamond mining in Angola’s Lunda provinces is causing widespread hunger and deepening poverty, according to new research to be released on July 30 2008. The report, titled Harvesting Hunger in Angola’s Diamond Fields, focuses on the activities of the Sociedade Mineira do Cuango (SMC): a joint venture led and managed by a British-based mining enterprise, ITM Mining, in partnership with the Angolan diamond parastatal, Endiama, and Lumanhe, a private company owned by Angolan Army generals.

Research conducted by independent Angolan journalist Rafael Marques, in collaboration with a network of local activists in the Cuango municipality of Lunda Norte province, records how SMC usually arrives without warning at night and destroys fields where crops are cultivated. The company then takes arbitrary measurements of the affected areas in order to determine how much to pay the peasants. This practice is leaving thousands of people hungry while SMC expands its concessions. In 2007, SMC had a production turnover of 340,002 carats of diamonds, yet farmers are paid only US$0.25 for each square metre of land that is seized.

The report highlights how the legal framework that governs the diamond industry in the Lunda provinces effectively denies full rights of citizenship to the region’s farming population, putting the commercial interests of the companies ahead of the local people’s land rights. Yet even those aspects of the law which ought to provide some protection for farmers – demanding, for example, fair compensation for land expropriated – are routinely ignored by SMC, whose compensation payments in no way reflect the productive value of the land that is being seized. The company appears to enjoy impunity despite the illegality of its actions.

The report calls on the companies involved to start negotiations with the farming communities of the Lunda region with a view to establishing mechanisms to ensure fair compensation for people who lose access to their land as a result of the granting of diamond mining concessions. It calls on the Angolan government to enforce the laws that govern the diamond industry in the Lundas, and to ensure that the region’s farmers are accorded their full rights as citizens.

*For further information, please contact Rafael Marques at +244 929 419644; +244 912 331034; or by e-mail at: [email][email protected]

*Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at

Reporters Without Borders condemns the government’s decision on 8 July to suspend independent Radio Despertar’s broadcasts for 180 days on the grounds that their current range, 400 km, is much more the 50 km stipulated in its licence. The suspension comes just one month before an election campaign is due to begin on 5 August.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Luanda was closed at the end of May 2008.

In light of this, a number of Angolan and international organizations (working with Angolan partners), wish to state the following:

- We support the concerns raised by numerous voices about the negative consequences of this decision in terms of its potential impact in particular on the human rights protection of the most vulnerable citizens and on human rights defenders in Angola, but also on the various Angolan Government institutions working on human rights programmes; and concretely. We are concerned about the significance of this act in the run-up to elections, a key moment in the country’s history. This process requires the consolidation of peace and democracy, which depend on the respect of human rights – for which international bodies such as the OHCHR make an important contribution;

- We believe that there is a contradiction between the reality of human rights violations in Angola, as identified by national and international bodies (and raised with the Angolan authorities, regional organisations, and international bodies) 1 & 2 and the Government’s position favouring the closure of the UN office;

- We refute the claims made by the government of the Republic of Angola that the UN Office had no legal status in the country. In 2003, the Angola authorities agreed to the continuation of the OCHCR field office (after the departure of the UN peacekeeping mission). In addition, this unilateral decision is in contradiction to the conditions laid out for Angola's membership of the United Nations Human Rights Council;

- We wish to call to the attention of the national and international bodies who represent the future interests of all citizens – in Angola, in those countries that have close bilateral relations with Angola, in Africa and in the world - that ignoring such contradictions and remaining silent when human rights are disrespected, ensuring that human rights issues are not addressed, will only result in future instability and crises. This will sooner or later increase the suffering of all citizens, but especially of the poorest and most vulnerable.

3 June 2008

Proposed reforms to Angola's Penal Code have divided opinion in the country about whether HIV-positive people who intentionally infect others with the virus should be punished. The law under discussion calls for a sentence of between three and 10 years in prison for those who knowingly pass on infectious diseases, including HIV.

Angola's government has authorised a Chinese ship carrying arms destined for Zimbabwe to dock, although it says it will not be allowed to unload weapons. In a statement, the government said the vessel would only be allowed to deliver goods intended for Angola.

The United Nations announced that it will close its human rights office in Angola, after authorities in the southern African nation decided not to sign an agreement that would have formally established the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in the country. OHCHR, which has had a presence in Angola since 2003, has been asked by the Government to cease its activities in the country by 31 May, according to a news release issued by the Geneva-based Office.