In a statement signed by Secretary-General Jacinto António Télica, FLEC-FAC reports that young civilians were killed on Tuesday by a mixed patrol of military personnel from the Angolan Armed Forces (FAA) and the police in the village of Binga-Grande, in Buco-Zau region, on suspicion of belonging to the FAC.
Four days earlier, they add, a young gold digger was killed by police in the same village.
"FLEC-FAC vigorously denounces this repressive escalation in relation to the civilian population of Cabinda and calls for the reaction of the international community", underlines the document, in an alert to the government "about its practices contrary to all human values".
Independenceists point out that the "Cabinda population suffers the consequences of violence that often does not differentiate between civilians and FAC soldiers".
The province of Cabinda, where most of the country's oil reserves are concentrated, has not been contiguous with the rest of the territory and, for many years, local leaders have defended independence, alleging an autonomous colonial history of Luanda.
FLEC, through its "armed wing", the FAC, fights for the independence of that province, claiming that the enclave was a Portuguese protectorate, as established in the Treaty of Simulambuco, signed in 1885, and not an integral part of the Angolan territory.
Cabinda is bordered on the north by the Republic of Congo, on the east and on the south by the Democratic Republic of Congo and on the west by the Atlantic Ocean.
