"On the ride of the pandemic there were abuses in the attitude and actions of the police, gratuitous violence and excessive use of force, which was neither proportional nor justified," said Pedro Neto, in an interview with the Lusa agency.
Since the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic, more than a dozen people have died as a result of police interventions to enforce the measures in place in the state of emergency and public calamity, including the wearing of masks.
On September 1, a doctor was taken to a police station for not wearing a mask in his car and died in circumstances still unclear.
These cases have motivated several protests against police violence, promoted mainly by young people, in Angola, but also abroad, including in Portugal.
"We call for the police to be trained to know how to act, not to abuse the force and at the expense of the pandemic or not wearing the masks commit acts that have no justification," argued Pedro Neto.
The head of the Portuguese section of AI spoke of street vendors violently expelled and young people assaulted just for being on the street.
"This situation worries us a lot because the security forces exist to protect people and not the opposite," he said.
"The police and security forces are still in the other time and they have to update themselves and act in accordance with what the civil and political rights of the people are," he added.
On the global human rights situation in Angola, Pedro Neto stressed the "significant signs" and "hope" given by President João Lourenço, but regretted that, so far, they have not gone beyond the speech.
The Portuguese leader of the IA highlighted as positive the fact that activists arrested in 2016, the 15+2, are at liberty, as well as the readiness of the head of state to draft a new law on community lands, some of which are appropriated by farmers, governors and politicians, thus ensuring the continuity of their use by shepherds.
"It is necessary to pass from these signs to practice. There is an environment of freedom of expression and thought that has improved. Now other signs that we want to see, are taking time to become effective, to move from words to deeds," said Pedro Neto, pointing out in particular the fight against extreme poverty through "serious aid" to populations.
The covid-19 pandemic has already caused more than one million deaths and more than 33.7 million cases of infection worldwide, according to a balance made by the French agency AFP.
Angola has 183 deaths and 4972 cases of infection with the new coronavirus.
