According to a press release from the parliamentary group of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), the delegation "was the target of a serious attack on their physical integrity, premeditated and carried out by militias of the party-state".
The injured are UNITA militants who accompanied the delegation that went to that region for a visit "previously communicated to the governor of the province of Huambo", it says.
"However, he did not assume the responsibility of guaranteeing and ensuring security conditions, a duty of the State and a right of citizens, especially deputies to the National Assembly, as members of a sovereign body", it highlights.
According to the parliamentary group of the largest opposition party, the day before the visit, "there was an attempt to limit access to the municipality, with the partial destruction of a bridge, in a genuine act of vandalism of public property and heritage, punishable under the law".
The UNITA parliamentary group stresses that the provincial government was informed of the reasons for the visit to the municipality of Galanga, but, "despite the proper justification for the purposes of the visit, to verify the events of 30 May on site, as well as the need to show solidarity and promote a climate of peace and harmony", the delegation was attacked.
In the note, the UNITA parliamentary group accuses "local leaders of the regime" of organizing "groups of militias who, gathered near the municipal administration headquarters, drugged and armed with arrows, machetes, sticks, clubs and stones, attacked the deputies, following orders from the local leadership of the MPLA [Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola]".
These facts, it states, were confirmed by "one of the two attackers who, overpowered by the MPs' companions, was detained by the National Police officers deployed to the location".
"The attacker claimed that the instructions for the attack on the physical integrity of the deputies were made with the guarantee that those who carried it out would later be financially rewarded by the municipal administration and would benefit from the Kwenda Program [social support of monetary transfers to vulnerable families], a repeated practice of the regime of using indigence, poverty and hunger to exploit peaceful citizens", accuses the UNITA parliamentary group.
"The UNITA parliamentary group strongly condemns yet another attack on the physical integrity of deputies" from its parliamentary group "and demands that the justice authorities hold the perpetrators morally and materially accountable, in civil and criminal terms", it emphasizes.
At the end of May, UNITA also denounced and condemned the attack on a delegation led by the party's provincial secretary and deputy to the National Assembly, Apolo Yakuvela, who intended to carry out a visit within the scope of the new political-administrative division of Angola, for the implementation of party structures.
