In a statement to the Lusa agency, PRA president Manuel Dias dos Santos accused the government of "devising a political maneuver" with the Presidential Decree of the state of public calamity, to avoid the "serious threat" of propagation and contamination of covid-19.
The demonstration "was properly prepared and everything was taken care of," said Manuel Dias dos Santos, classifying the threat of propagation of the new coronavirus as an excuse.
"Covid-19 cannot condition what is the mother law of the country - the Constitution", he said, adding: "The alleged concerns about health and infection did not exist in the way the demonstrators were arrested, nor how they are being judged, on the hill and, even with masks, without the necessary distance".
For PRA, "nothing was by chance".
"Unfortunately, this kind of government behavior is a practice," said Manuel Dias dos Santos, classifying the use of firearms as "incomprehensible.
"The Angolan state has the best police to act in acts that it considers violent. The use of firearms presupposes the risk of acts that lead to uncontrolled and loss of human life," he said.
The charges also extend to the detention of minors, who "should have been released immediately," and some citizens who, in PRA's view, only observed the events.
Regarding the demonstration scheduled for Angola on November 11, the date of the country's independence, Manuel Dias dos Santos believes that it "will really happen, regardless of what decrees the government makes.
"Angola and those who govern it have not followed the dynamics of generational change that occurred in the country. Most of the people who participated in the Saturday rally in Luanda were born in the last years of the war or when the war ended, in 2003. They are in the prime of life and lived a set of promises on the part of the rulers who did not see them come true," he said.
These young people, he added, "are still waiting for their future. They live without drinking water, without basic sanitation, without electricity, in the surroundings, without being able to continue their studies. And the new governance cannot be justified with the past, because the party is and always has been the same".
"It's a clear cry of rupture with a tired generation that presents it with dead ends,
Following the events of Saturday, a group of 103 demonstrators was arrested and since Monday their trial has been taking place at the Luanda Provincial Court.
The demonstration was called by civil society to demand better living conditions, more jobs and the holding of the first local elections in the country, with the participation of UNITA leaders and activists.
The police suppressed the protest, with clashes that resulted in 103 arrests, injuries to police officers, and undisclosed numbers of demonstrators, as well as the destruction of the means of law enforcement.
According to the demonstrators, two people were "shot dead" during the confrontations.
The protests were also marked by the throwing of stones, the placing of barricades on the road with dumpsters and burning tires by the demonstrators.
