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UNITA President accuses Government of using covid-19 to hide weaknesses

UNITA President Adalberto da Costa Júnior accused the government this Sunday of being "cowardly" using covid-19 to "hide its weaknesses and increasingly assuming "a repressive and violent dimension".

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In declarations to Lusa, Adalberto da Costa Júnior pointed out that the decree with new measures in face of the public calamity situation, among which the prohibition of gatherings with more than five people, was published in the Diário da República "in record time.

"Measures were announced at 7 pm to come into force five hours later," said the political leader, stating that the measures were used to prevent the demonstration called for the following day.

"Covid-19 is a danger and an enormous threat, but it should not be a factor of instrumentalization, the demonstrations are held all over the world and so are the elections," he said, accusing the government of using "unfortunately, cowardly covid-19 to hide its weaknesses".

Adalberto da Costa Júnior, who demanded the immediate release of the "prisoners of conscience", alluding to the hundred or so demonstrators who are being held, stressed that the Executive is "incapable of respecting the law, but shows itself capable of making laws of convenience".

The president of UNITA also said that the Luanda provincial command of the National Police called on Friday the organizers of the demonstration, with whom he spoke and agreed on the itinerary to be followed in Saturday's demonstration.

"What is the surprise when, on Saturday, a very strong repressive apparatus was placed in all the municipalities to prevent them from participating in the demonstration," he regretted.

In a statement to the TPA, the Secretary of State of the Interior Ministry, Salvador Rodrigues, said that on Friday the police received assurances from the promoters of the demonstration that it would not take place.

The UNITA official also criticized the "gratuitous violence" during the protest and said that the police fired real bullets.

"There are lots of images of beatings, assaults and arbitrary arrests, including of journalists, and seizure of passes, all on the cover of avoiding the transmission of the pandemic," he stressed, pointing out that JURA (UNITA's youth arm) Secretary General Agostinho Kamuango, civic activist Laura Macedo, jurist Priscila Martelo and the president of the Movement of Angolan Students (MEA), Francisco Teixeira, are being held, among others.

He therefore attributes responsibility for "acts of violence, disturbances and even death" to the police and "their principals".

The existence of a dead person, denounced by the activist Dito Dali, was denied by Salvador Rodrigues.

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