On Thursday, former Presidents of Botswana Ian Khama and Colombia Andrés Pastrana, Mozambican politician Venâncio Mondlane and other leaders of African parties were held for several hours at the 4 de Fevereiro International Airport in Luanda, with some of them being prevented from entering, without any information being provided about the incident by the Angolan authorities.
Adalberto Costa Júnior, speaking to the press about what happened on Thursday in Luanda, said that the conference co-organised with the Brenthurst Foundation, in collaboration with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the World Liberty Congress, has as its main theme the "battle between democracy and autocracy" and considered that what happened was a way for the Government to offer, "free of charge, publicity to the whole world of what is the (...) reality" of Angola.
According to the leader of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), the approximately 50 foreign participants were invited by the organizations, and the party was responsible for bringing this event to Angola, after having participated in the two previous initiatives, which took place in Poland and South Africa.
"What happens is that the answer has been given to everyone, we are not a democracy, we are an extreme autocracy and I think that João Lourenço's bad advisors are making him have a very bad image today as leader of the African Union", he stated.
The president of UNITA said that he fulfilled his role, communicating the arrival of the guests to the Presidency of the Republic and the Government.
"I fulfilled my role, I spoke to the Presidency of the Republic during the day, I shared with the President of the Republic's main advisors what was happening, so they cannot say that they did not know", he stated, adding that he had as interlocutors the Ministers of the Interior, the Presidency and Foreign Affairs, in addition to the "party bosses".
"I think that the people who did this must have no political culture, no basic diplomatic culture, and must not know what international relations are," he added.
For the UNITA leader, "the president of the African Union violated the organization's protocols" and "Angola made the worst impression it could make" because it detained "former Presidents of the Republic, refused protocol rights, refused the State protocol room to former Prime Ministers, MPs, former Presidents, the Vice-President of the Republic in office, and sent senators from several countries, including senators from Kenya, back to their countries of origin with visas from the Angolan embassy."
According to Adalberto da Costa Júnior, some guests are present in Benguela and around 35 stayed in Luanda, and are expected to participate remotely in the conference.
Speaking to Lusa, UNITA's Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Rafael Massanga Savimbi, said that the guests who managed to enter on Thursday were supposed to have boarded the flight to Benguela on Friday morning, but at the airport they were informed that the flight had been postponed until 6:00 pm.
Rafael Massanga Savimbi said that 12 people were deported on Thursday, including Mozambican politician Venâncio Mondlane, considering that the unrest began when the immigration authorities "saw a considerable number of people, all heading in the same direction and for the same reason".
"The unrest began there and certainly when they saw Venâncio", said Rafael Savimbi, adding that the guests included personalities from all over the world, mostly Africans, members of civil society, party presidents, senators, members of parliament, and representatives of academic institutions.
"There are 18 countries from Africa alone that were represented here, there are Latin Americans, there are from the US, there are Asians, there are Europeans, it is a sharing of democracy and development, now see what image each of them takes back to their countries when they return", he pointed out.
UNITA joined the conference to "combine business with pleasure" by coinciding with 13 March, the date of the party's founding, he added.
