According to the coordinator of Civicop, Marcy Lopes, who spoke at the opening of this year's first meeting, in 2023, "for various reasons", the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), the largest opposition party, made a public communication to announce the departure of the commission.
"We were not formally notified of this withdrawal, however the members of this party who are part of this committee were contacted, notified and invited to this meeting, but they sent us a letter informing us that they withdrew from the committee and for this reason they will not be present here", said Marcy Lopes, also Minister of Justice and Human Rights.
According to Marcy Lopes, these matters are dealt with through administrative procedures: "Their withdrawal must follow the same procedure, which is formal information to the committee and it must be sent for their consideration, noting that they do not wish to be part of the committee".
The Civicop coordinator stressed that this situation does not prevent the commission from continuing its work, "on the contrary, people and organizations that decide to withdraw from the commission will eventually be able to return".
"The motto of this committee is to embrace and forgive and we have to embrace and forgive each other and so we do not have doors closed to anyone. Regardless of any situation we are open to continuing our work, we must do it in the name and benefit of the State, in the name and benefit of the nation and in the name and benefit of the people who, as a result of these conflicts, lost their loved ones", he highlighted.
The government official also highlighted that the commission's mandate is to "ensure that all possible situations of mitigating suffering, finding the remains and returning them to their families are effectively carried out, (...) because in this way the nation will be victorious, the country, the process of reconciliation and national unity".
UNITA announced in December that it decided to abandon Civicop because it "distorted" its mission and turned into a "distiller of hate", blaming the President, João Lourenço.
UNITA leader, Adalberto Costa Júnior, said that the party had decided to decline its participation in Civicop, because the organization remains "hostage to the regime's spurious interests".
Adalberto Costa Júnior stressed that the situation has been noted by the party "in several events and situations that have occurred recently, thus not serving the purposes for which it was created: those of national reconciliation and the pacification of spirits in Angola".
At a press conference, the leader of UNITA argued the decision to withdraw, claiming that "in recent days, the Angolan people have once again witnessed an incessant search operation and desecration of graves in territories that were under the administration of UNITA during the civil war, outside the frameworks and rules that should govern the functioning of Civicop".
One of the facts, Adalberto Costa Júnior mentioned at the time, were the reports shown by Televisão Pública de Angola (TPA), which showed images of Jamba, a former UNITA stronghold during the period of the armed conflict, where Civicop technicians were excavating in search of bones of the victims, allegedly Jonas Savimbi, founding leader of the party, buried there.
