Health equity and human rights

This report discusses the human right issue of limits on the freedom of assembly, association, speech and press in Angola. It covers the violations of human rights laws by the authorities, including the illegal surveillance of journalists and government opponents. The report also discusses advocacy actions to prevent further extortion and harassment of journalists and protestors.

RUNNING HEAD: Health equity and human rights 0
Health equity and human rights

Health equity and human rights 1
Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................2
Human rights issue................................................................................................................................2
Advocacy actions..................................................................................................................................5
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................7
References.............................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
The human rights are the basic rights which belong to every person from birth to death. The
human rights can be restricted for some time but can never be taken away. These are defined
and protected by law. The basic rights are founded on the shared values like equality,
fairness, dignity, respect and independence. Angola is a west-coast country of Southern
African nation. It is the 7th largest country in Africa. Angola is a member state of OPEC,
United Nations, African union, the Southern African Development Community and more.
Angola has been criticized for its record of human rights. The major important human rights
abuses are official corruption and impunity, limits on the freedom of assembly, association,
speech, press and cruel and excessive punishment.
This report is going to discuss human right issue which is limits on the freedom of assembly,
association, speech and press. The constitution and law of Angola prohibits discrimination on
the basis of race, gender, disability, religion, language or social status. But the government
did not effectively enforce these prohibitions. Angola’s 2010 constitution assures right to the
freedom of expression and media. The government of the Angola is assumed to be engage in
the illegal surveillance of the journalists and the government opponents. The journalists in the
Angola are arrested, stressed and charged with defamation. Some journalists are even accused
of shooting, wounding, vandalism and burglary. The business organizations are also hassled
by the government to withdraw advertising from the media which is critical.
Human rights issue
The authorities in Angola continued to violate human rights laws by contradicting citizens the
right to peaceful protest. The security forces obstructed peaceful anti-government protests
with extortion, excessive force and uninformed detention. The government owns and keeps
the tight control over the largest media outlets in Angola (Sunga, 2017). It comprises
television channels and the radio station. Some of the outlets have national reach which
makes government owned media to the most widely accessed news sources. The independent
news outlets face pressure because of the denial of state and private advertising. It continues
to be problem for news outlets (De Búrca, 2017). The authorities used to occasionally seize
edition of newspapers which comprised critical information. Some examples of the human
rights issues can be understood from the examples such as since 2011, the security forces and
the agents in civilian clothes viciously cracked down a series of peaceful protests. The

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plainclothes agents viciously confronted detects and journalists covering the events in various
cases. In many cases, police subjectively detained protesters, some of them were prosecuted
and penalized to prison sentences. Police briefly imprisoned journalists and confiscated their
equipment in a specious attempt to stop them from reporting. Even human rights watch
documented numerous cases in which jailed protestors were forced to make statements to the
state television while in custody (Figueiras and Ribeiro, 2013). The organizers of ananti-
government youth protested organized rallies in Luanda and Benguela. These rallies were
targeted with the anonym’s threats of death via text messages, kidnappings, bullying and
severe beatings by unidentified individuals. The core criminals of violence during objections
were groups of the armed individuals. Those acted with complete liberty and the security
agents appear in the civilian clothes. Between the March 2011 to July 2012, the threats and
armed attacked against protest leaders by these civilian clothes security agents who are
known as ‘caenches’ or ‘militia’ frequently increased. They comprised attacks against
protestors in their private residences, kidnappings and possible imposed disappearances
(Djankov, McLiesh, Nenova and Shleifer, 2003). The protesters and victims of violence filed
several complaints to police. The human rights watch was not aware of the credible police
investigation and prosecution of perpetrators.
The government at Angola used to harass members of country’s deteriorating independent
media. In 2014, a group of generals brought a criminal defamation case against the director of
the online news site Maka Angola and claimed $1.2 million in damages. The director accused
several military officers of engaging in torture and other human rights violations with the
private mining companies. He was also charged with a total 24 counts of illicit defamation.
On June 2015, fifteen young activists were imprisoned on charges of state safety crimes
comprising agitation in association with their contribution in a book club at which they were
deliberating a book about civil defiance to authoritarian rule. The members of the group were
exposed to violence in imprisonment and various journalists participated in the hunger strikes
in order to protest their imprisonment. The whole group was held in imprisonment beyond
the limit of 90 days prior transferred to the house arrest. The trial was began by them and
constantly delayed (Dancy and Montal, 2017).
The independent journalists are also regularly monitored and harassed by state agents. In
2015, many of them came to fear that they could be exposed to uninformed arrest and
imprisonment at any time. The foreign journalists were also subjected to harassment and

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extortion. The journalists who cover sensitive issues concerning government, human rights or
corruption have trouble in obtaining visas to report in Angola (Fredman and Goldblatt, 2015).
On February, 2017, police blocked a protest in Luanda of about 12 people who were entitled
for the resignation of the territorial admin minister, Bornito de Sousa. The police broke up on
the same day as a peaceful protest and imprisoned 2 activists in Benguela domain who were
also called for the resignation of the minister. In the April, 7 activists were sentenced to 45
days in jail for resisting arrest during a protest against the voters’ registration process. The
authorities imprisoned eighteen members of the Lunda Tchokwe Protectorate Movement in
June, who were opposing for regional autonomy. The ministry of Interior banned all protests
for not contesting in the August election. The government also sued that street protests
planned by the activists posed a security risk.
In the exceptional show of patience, the authorities on March 18 allowed a group of women
to protest against the criminalization of abortion (Shestack, 2017). The authorities also
allowed opposition party National union to protest march against the irregularities in the
election process.
Joao Loutenco was elected as president in September 2017. He pledged to govern for all the
citizens of the country. Freedom of the press continued under threat after the enactment of the
new law in the opposition of journalist’s union and human right groups. The media in Angola
is largely controlled by the government and people connected to the ruling party, the People’s
Movement for the liberalisation and Angola (MPLA). The government sustained to restrict
freedom of expression by censoring state-run media and private media. During the election
campaign, the pro-ruling party coverage by the state media was censured by the election
observers from African union, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and
Angola’s journalist union (Croese, 2017).
The law passed 5 laws in order to limit freedom of expression, despite opposition from the
journalist union and the alike groups. The Angolan government referred to it as the Social
Communication Legislative package (Hofmann and Wisotzki, 2014). These laws are signed by
the President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos which comprises television law, press law, broadcast
law and code of conduct law for the journalists and the statues of the government body of the
country (Sanders, 2016).

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The press law provides the authority to oversee the way media organizations carry out
editorial decisions and suspend activities of violators. The law also criminalizes publication
of text or picture which is offensive to the individuals. The offence and calumny are
punishable with fines and imprisonment under the Angolan penal code. The imprisonment
period can be up to six months. The journalists union confronted the law before the
constitutional court (Jordaan, 2016). It is because the court had not ruled on the case at the
time of writing.
Advocacy actions
The human rights approach is still the best approach as it comprises greater freedom of
expression, access to the rights and the greater freedom of the assembly. There are many
rights which are guaranteed by the constitution of Angola. The Angolan government is
pleased under human rights treaties in which the state party respects the right to freedom of
opinion, expression and assembly. It specially protects the freedom to meet and exchange
opinions freely (Kasoma,1995). It demonstrates change in the areas of discontent. It requires
authorities to ensure participation of the citizens and civil society in the resolution of the
national problems. Despite of committing to take measures to respect, protect and promote
the rights such as freedom of expression, opinion and assembly, the Angolan authorities
continue to overtly suppress these rights (Ruggie, 2017).
The advocacy actions prevent further extortion and harassment of journalists and protestors.
The actions are intended to make sure that such incidents are promptly investigated and
offenders held to responsible. It makes sure that the accessibility of the political parties is
equal to the state media which is beyond the specific time allocated by law during the official
election campaign. It also certifies that state owned media do not broadcast messages which
promote political violence and encourage limits on the rights to peaceful assembly and free
expression (Lake, 2014). The freedom of assembly can be attained if there is right to hold
public meetings form associations without the interferences of the government. Angola
government sanctioned a freedom of information law in 2002. It grants chance to the citizens
to access to the government generated documents. However, in practice, accessing
information rests difficult for the independent journalists and the new organizations that do
not retain government links. But the key parts of the freedom of information legislation such
as creation of a monitoring commission have not been executed (Choi and James, 2017).

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The human rights watch impulses committee to call Angolan government to stop further
pressure and harassment of journalists and activists. It is demanded to drop politically
motivated charges against the journalists and others for crimes against the security of the state
under the article 25 of the 2010 national security law. The law is urged to revise so that it is
in the conformity with the international standards concerning the right to free expression and
peaceful assembly (Puri, 2017). The Angolan government is required to discriminate
defamation and others related offences in the press law, the new draft criminal code and
related legislation.
Since 2009, the human rights watch documents the right to peaceful assembly and the regular
disruption by Angolan security forces. The peaceful demonstrations are organized by the
different organizations in order to protect a variety of grievances comprising forced evictions,
corruption and more. Most of these protests were announced in advance as requisite by the
Angolan law and the protests were peaceful (Landman, 2016).
The constitution protects freedom of speech and press and laws regarding state security and
the free practice of journalism. The 2010 state security law permits for the imprisonment of
persons who insult the republic of Angola or the president in the public meetings or by
publicising words, pictures, words or sound. The crimes such as defamation and slander are
punishable by the detention. The Angolan government constantly rejected international
recommendations to legalize smear, slander and defamation (Pogge and Sengupta, 2016). The
president Jose Eduardo dos Santos in 2015 apprehend about the speed of libel and moral
violent content on the social media network. The legislation was called by the president such
as ‘avert the emergence of such practices.’
Angola also approved new constitution in 2010 and it repealed the constitutional law of 1992.
This new constitution made a few positive changes in the legislation, specifically in the
chapter on the rights and the fundamental freedom of the citizens. For instance, the number of
articles increased from 35 to 59 in the current constitution. It should also be noticed that the
current constitutional text is much better organised in the terms of the generation of the rights
(Andreopoulos, 2018). Although there is no more than a technical observation and there is gulf
which separates protected rights from the actual realization. The government persecutes
human rights protectors just as abductions and killing of activists and the political adversaries
continue to arise. Despite of being progress in the law, in practice things have just remained
suspended. For instance, it is impossible for the public to exercise their constitutionally

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assured right to assembly and protest. However, this right is respected by the police and the
government authorities even if the events are organized by the ruling party. The duty of the
Angolan police is to assure safety of the public and uphold the fundamental rights and the
freedom of the citizens. Instead of this, forces and firearms are used against the journalists
and the protestors (O’Flaherty and Ulrich, 2016). They also make arrests and imprisonment
without following any laws. These illegal practices are accompanied by the imprisonment
and the criminalization of the journalists who cover the footage.
Conclusion
The human rights are the basic rights which are exercised by everyone. The human right issue
which limits on the freedom of assembly, association, speech and press have been thoroughly
discussed in this report. The government of the Angola is presumed to be engage in the
illegal surveillance of the journalists and the government opponents. The journalists in the
Angola are arrested, stressed and charged with defamation. The authorities in Angola
sustained to violate human rights laws by denying citizens the right to peaceful protest. The
government owns and keeps the tight control over the largest media outlets in Angola. The
government at Angola used to harass members of country’s deteriorating independent media.
The independent journalists are also regularly monitored and harassed by state agents. The
advocacy actions are taken in the Angola which comprises greater freedom of expression,
access to the rights and the greater freedom of the assembly. These advocacy actions avert
further extortion and harassment of journalists and protestors. The government approved
various legislations for protecting freedom of speech and press and laws regarding state
security and the free practice of journalism. These constitution and the laws have improved
conditions till some extend but there is till need to make more improvement in order to gain
freedom of media and assembly.

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