In a note released Thursday, CPJ reports the case of reporter Jorge Manuel, from Rádio Despertar, owned by the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) party, who was detained on April 7 by the police while covering protests against evictions. residents in the municipality of Sequele, in Luanda, and his phone and tape recorder were confiscated.
According to a CPJ report by the reporter, his lawyer, Pedro Camgombe, and the deputy director of Rádio Despertar Queirós Chiluvia, Manuel was in detention until April 12, when he was released on condition that he shows up at the police station every 15 days, while the authorities determine whether it was part of the anti-eviction protest, and the work equipment was not returned to him.
"The government of Angolan President João Lourenço must control the country's security forces and ensure that journalists can cover news events without being arbitrarily detained or harassed with orders to appear repeatedly before the Police," said the CPJ Africa Program coordinator, Angela Quintal.
"The authorities should end the investigation against reporter Jorge Manuel, return his equipment and allow him and all other members of the press to work freely," she said.
According to Jorge Manuel, the Police arrested all participants in the protest, including himself, despite having identified himself as a journalist, contacts from Rádio Despertar to the police station during the detention were ignored for several days, and he was taken to a cell in Sequele, no place to sleep or washrooms.
"It was a terrible ordeal, I was not beaten, but I feel psychologically beaten," the journalist told CPJ.
The journalist was released on Monday, after being heard by a prosecutor, who said he had been detained for five days because there was no one available to "instruct the case," he said.
Luanda police spokesman Nestor Goubel told CPJ that Manuel did not identify himself as a journalist when he was arrested and only did so at the police station.
Asked why Manuel remained in detention for more than five days after identifying himself as a journalist, Goubel made no further comment, saying only that the police "are investigating whether he helped erect barricades from the protest".
According to the police, the demonstrators "invaded properties and resisted attempts by the authorities to evict them".
Teixeira Cândido, secretary general of the Union of Angolan Journalists, told CPJ that Manuel's prolonged detention seriously violated the criminal procedural law, which states that suspects can only be detained 48 hours before being heard.
In October 2020, CPJ documented "the harassment, beatings and detention by the authorities of journalists covering protests" and equipment was confiscated from journalists from the radio station Rádio Essencial and the publication Valor Económico.
