lunedì 25 novembre 2013

Angola: no protest, less freedom!


After two years trying to go in the street for any pacific protest and never succeding it's finally more then clear that in Angola is forbidden any kind of protest. 

The country is facing what the people here call dittatura eduardiana something that has been going on for 32 years. And a leitmotif during these last few years is became 32 is enough!

As a matter of fact in this democratic country, today more then ever is evident, there's no room for any critic, debate, opinion that looks even slightly against the government.

Saturday morning all over Angola (...not only in Luanda), many people woke up, took a bottle of water, a hat, some of them took also a poster handwritten with the names of two angolan dissidents declared killed few days ago for political reasons, with the aim to join the streets. 

But what happened is that just few of them had the chance to even arrive at the meeting point of the pacific manifestation. 

Most of them once there, probably just wanted to have the chance to walk pacifically through the streets of their towns saying loudly "we deserve respect, we deserve to live in peace, after having won the fight against the colonialist and after having fought a fratricidal war," just in order to say we won't die for political reasons in this country in 2013, after more then 10 years of peace!

Instead of being free of doing it, when they woke up they discovered the manifestation had been forbidden by the government for "security reason"

Then, at least in Luanda, the police dispersed, mostly with the use of tear gas and water jets, the protesters gathered close to the Sant'Anna Cemetery, the start point of the manifestation, and arrested dozens of people. 

According to the "Report on human rights practices in 2012 in Angola" realized by the State Department of the United States,  bureau of democracy, human rights and labor, the three most important violations of human rights in Angola are "corruption, limits on freedom of assembly, association, expression and limits on press freedom".  That's it!  






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