The parliamentary group of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), in a statement made public, considers that the law on crimes of vandalism of public goods and services “aggressively violates” the principles and norms established in the Constitution.
For UNITA, the law, with penalties ranging up to 25 years in prison, violates the rights and dignity of the human person by prescribing “excessive custodial sentences”.
According to the party, the law that criminalizes vandalism, approved last July and published on August 29 in the Official Gazette, after promulgation by President João Lourenço, “may put at risk the right to strike, by considering disturbance as an act of vandalism".
The most serious penalty under this law is 20 to 25 years, recalls the party, highlighting that the aforementioned severe penalties “violate the principles of proportionality and humanity of penalties, human dignity, the democratic State and the rule of law”.
The law “does not clarify which legal asset is to be protected, whether it is the crime of damage [vandalism] or the good of life, by equating them in the same criminal framework”, it says in the note.
The Angolan Bar Association also recently filed an appeal for abstract successive review of the constitutionality of this law with the TC, as it understands that the diploma “compromises” fundamental rights, freedoms and guarantees.
The law applicable only to acts against the security and integrity of public goods and services has been challenged by members of civil society and Angolan politics for allegedly limiting the exercise of citizens' fundamental freedoms, especially the right to assembly and demonstration.
The legal diploma, approved by parliament only with favorable votes from the MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola), gave rise to the call for a demonstration, by civic activists, which was stopped on August 31st by the police, in Luanda , followed by arrests and intimidation of journalists who covered the event.
