//REPEATING//MEDIA-ANGOLA: Tough Times For Journalists

By Mercedes Sayagues Reprint | | Print |

Mercedes Sayagues

MALANGE, Oct 4 1999 (IPS) - Isaias Soares does not walk alone on the streets of Malange. He doesn’t go out at night at all. He is afraid of the security forces.

Soares is a radio reporter in a besieged provincial capital in war-ravaged Angola. His crime was to interview the local representative of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), who said police and soldiers were stealing food aid from starving peasants after distributions. The interview was broadcast in August by the Voice of America (VoA) in Angola.

Other aid workers in Malange testify that such theft occurs. To minimize risks, nuns advise people to go home in groups after food distribution.

Soon after the broadcast, Soares was briefly detained. He now faces criminal charges. His sources won’t talk to him. His job with Radio Nacional de Angola is on the line.

His fate is worse for being a provincial reporter. Governors run provincial capitals ruthlessly as their private fiefs. Independent views are not tolerated. “Provincial journalists are the most vulnerable,” says the director of radio Ecclesia in Luanda, Antonio Jaka.

With most provincial capitals cut off from road transport, accessible only by air, and with permanent tight police controls at the airport and access roads, journalists are virtual prisoners. A governor can easily impede a provincial reporter from leaving town.

Soares first got into trouble with the governor of Malange, Flavio Fernandes in 1997. The governor’s office banned him from free-lancing for VoA after he filed several reports criticizing the governor.

Soares, a thin, intense man, 30, with a flowing beard and a zeal for journalism since he was a cub reporter at 12, spoke to IPS at his brother’s apartment in Malange. He does not stay alone any longer for fear of being arrested without a witness.

“Angolan journalists are not free to report on what they hear, see, read or know,” says Soares.

His story is just one among many recent episodes of intimidation of the press.

His colleague, William Toneto, was detained early on Saturday by Angola’s secret police, according to fellow journalists at the bi-weekly Folha Oito newspaper in Luanda. The state has so far laid no charges against Toneto, the editor of Folha Oito.

The editor of Agora, Aguiar dos Santos, has also appeared four times, since August, at the Directorate of Criminal Investigations, to answer questions about an article by French sociologist Christine Messiant about President Eduardo Dos Santos which his newspaper reprinted.

In the last six months, two Angolan journalists had their passports confiscated and 16 reported police harassment for their stories. Since 1993, seven have been killed in unexplained circumstances.

In early August, journalists from the Catholic radio Ecclesia in Luanda were detained for nine hours, the station searched and its diskettes confiscated, after the radio re-broadcast a BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) interview with rebel Unita leader Jonas Savimbi.

The staff shut down the radio until their colleagues were released. Police said they should have requested permission before re-broadcasting the interview of a “war criminal”. The legal basis is a resurrected law of crimes against state security from 1978, the ruling party’s most repressive era.

“The message is not to talk too much about certain issues but we will not be intimidated,” says Jaka.

In May, BBC correspondent Lara Pawson was manhandled by three men as she got into her car in downtown Luanda. They told her it was because of reports on forced conscription of youth for the army. There are many more such examples.

In mid-August, Joao Faria, political editor of Angora, was involved in a rear collision with a car driven by plainclothes policemen. Three other cops in a patrol car pulled up and threatened Faria with arrest.

Faria believes the collision and threats were meant for him in his capacity of editor, peace activist with the Angola reflection group on peace (Garp) and author of a book-in-progress on the failures of the peace agreements signed in 1991 and 1994.

At the end of August, two journalists were mysteriously murdered in Luanda; their bodies found shot in a car. A few weeks later, a Unita Member of Parliament (MP) was found shot and killed far from his home. He had earlier attended a party for African legislators.

Whether motivated by politics or by theft, these murders show how little life is worth in Luanda, one of Africa’s most violent capitals.

Journalists work in an environment where murders remain uninvestigated and human rights abuses unpunished.

Angola has never enjoyed full press freedom. After independence, the Marxist one-party state did not tolerate dissidence. A thaw came before the elections in 1992. But, as war renewed soon after, its resumption dealt a blow for press freedom.

The next thaw came with the Lusaka peace agreement in 1994. A handful of independent and private media, mostly newsweeklies and a couple of radio stations limited to Luanda, appeared.

“With the return to war, these meaningful gains are once again threatened by censorship and intimidation,” says author Alex Vines in “Angola Unravels”, a recent report by Human Rights Watch.

In a recent letter, the Angolan union of journalists complained to the Attorney General that the National Directorate of Criminal Investigations applies undue and illegal pressure on journalists.

By law and by intimidation, the Angolan press has always been highly controlled. The law does not allow private TV station or short-wave radio stations. It also prohibits direct re- broadcasting.

In spite of the dearth of choices, Angolans are avid radio listeners. Surveys show that 80 percent of its 11 million people listen to radio, both national and international.

The national radio and TV stations are propaganda vehicles. It can be crude, like the clips flighted early this year after the evening newscasts, showing Savimbi as a war criminal, in a Wanted poster. It can be subtle, like this month’s clip: soft-focus images of unity and team work, under romantic music, like in a soft drink ad.

Naturally the government won’t relinquish its control of the airwaves. Nor will it tolerate dissent. Intimidations multiplied in 1999.

“There is generalized pressure on the independent media and generalized fear among us,” describes Antonio Jaka.

Says Human Rights Watch: “Attacks against the rights of freedom of expression and association have undermined the defense of other rights. They also delay peace and reconciliation by obstructing access to accurate information and the airing of different points of view.”

“There are some lines we can’t cross because we could be killed, jailed, harassed or fined,” says Mario Paiva, a senior journalist. “We don’t enjoy full freedom of expression.”

In the past, Paiva has received death threats by phone. He does not have a phone any longer. Beside threats, co-option and graft work. Newsweeklies, their editors and reporters can be enticed with grants, loans and trip abroad. The ruling party, led by the presidential clique, is an octopus of many tentacles. What it cannot intimidate or repress, it tries to buy.

Paiva notes that both warring sides dislike press freedom. “We are squashed between the two; threatened by the government for reporting on Unita while Unita complains we are unfair to it.”

The handful of journalists and media that resist, run risks, as Soares and Jaka well know. “Why are we arrested for informing people? We have done nothing wrong,” says Jaka. “We will continue our work.”

Press freedom is one of the first casualties in any war, and Angola is no exception.