Angola: Police Fire on Peaceful Protesters

Angolan police used live bullets, teargas, and dogs to disperse a peaceful anti-government protest, killing one protester, in the capital, Luanda, on November 11, 2020, Human Rights Watch said today. Police severely beat the well-known activists Nito Alves and Laurinda Goveia, who are both in critical condition, and arbitrarily arrested a third activist, Luaty Beirao.

Footage posted on social media shows people running through Luanda’s streets, seeking places to hide as police indiscriminately fired live bullets and teargas at them. Officers also beat protesters with batons, threw them inside police vans, and drove them away to unknown locations, witnesses told Human Rights Watch. “The police shooting at peaceful protesters is outrageous as well as criminal,” said Zenaida Machado, senior Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The government should thoroughly investigate the police use of unnecessary lethal force and hold those responsible to account.” In the early hours of November 11, Angola’s Independence Day, thousands of heavily armed police and plainclothes officers were deployed to the streets of Luanda ahead of an anti-government protest called by civil society groups to demand jobs and local elections in 2021.

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