Marcy Lopes, who is also Minister of Justice and Human Rights, spoke to the press at the end of the first Civicop meeting this year.
In the meeting, marked by the absence of members of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) party, the remaining members of the commission participated, with emphasis on the coordinator of the technical subcommittee, General Garcia Miala, also head of the Intelligence Service and State Security (Sinse).
At the beginning of the meeting, Marcy Lopes said that UNITA refused to participate in the meeting, through a letter it sent to the commission coordinator, noting that it had made a public announcement of withdrawal from the commission.
"Public administration has its own formalism, the procedure is written and UNITA was invited to be part of the commission through a written notification, to withdraw from the commission the procedure must be the same and not through a public announcement made through a statement", he stressed.
The official highlighted that Civicop works every day and "the commission is just the visible part of a working group, which is publicly presenting the results of the various working subgroups that are part of this commission".
Asked about who is part of the technical working groups and why UNITA did not participate in the latest actions to identify and exhume bodies at the end of last year, Marcy Lopes stated that "the question should be asked to UNITA, the invitation was made to all Civicop members".
Marcy Lopes said that UNITA, like the entire country, "is an interested party in this process" and that the commission's credibility is not in question.
"The commission is made up of several members and the credibility of this commission is conferred by the State and its members as a whole, not just by a single member", he said, reaffirming that the work will not stop due to this situation, as it was this Tuesday proven with the meeting.
UNITA announced in December its decision to abandon Civicop because it "distorted" its mission and turned into a "distiller of hate", blaming the President, João Lourenço.
The leader of UNITA, Adalberto Costa Júnior, said that the party had decided to decline its participation in Civicop, because the organization remains "hostage to the spurious interests of the regime", following several reports from Televisão Pública da Angola (TPA), which showed images of Jamba, former UNITA territory during the period of the armed conflict, showing excavations in search of the bones of victims, allegedly of Jonas Savimbi, founding leader of the "galo negro" party.
The Civicop coordinator highlighted that the commission is made up of several subgroups, one of which is the advance group, which identifies the places and exhumes the bodies, and then the laboratory and criminalistics, which, depending on the reports and information provided by people, they work with families and people of interest to collect DNA and perform laboratory analysis.
According to Marcy Lopes, at this point more than 700 bones are being analyzed and other analyzes that require certification are in the process of being completed.
Civicop was created in 2019 by the President, João Lourenço, and is made up of members of the Government, civil society, churches and political parties with seats in parliament. The commission is in charge of the general plan to honor the victims of the political conflicts, which occurred in Angola between November 11, 1975, the year of the country's independence, and April 4, 2002, the end of the armed conflict.
Last year, UNITA said it was taken by surprise by the search operation for bones in Jamba launched by the Government, which it described as "political propaganda" and contrary to the "appeasement of spirits", condemning the instrumentalization of the TPA by the information services of the MPLA.
The reconciliation initiative was also called into question by some orphans who reported that forensic examinations carried out on the bones of victims of May 27, 1977 confirmed that they did not correspond to their relatives.
At this first Civicop meeting of the year, the report on activities carried out by specialized technical groups during 2023 was presented.
The committee was also informed about all the actions to be carried out this year, so that society is informed of the points and work, he added.
