"The police initially denied the occurrence of a dead man, but the next day they eventually recognized, but what is even more disgusting is the way the police manipulated the information, because the young man who died, died on the spot, there on Avenida Brasil, shot dead," said this Friday Maurílio Luiele, in statements to Lusa.
According to the UNITA politician, the police are transmitting the information and "even manipulated the medical staff of Hospital Américo Boavida to provide false information.
"A bit like what already happened with Dr. Sílvio Dala [a doctor allegedly killed in a police station last September after being arrested for not wearing a face mask inside his car]," he recalled.
The young man was initially reported dead, but the police said he was only injured. The demonstrator eventually died, the medical team at the hospital where he was admitted the day before confirmed on Thursday.
The information was provided by the head of the team at the emergency bank of the Américo Boavida Hospital, where the 26-year-old university student, who was admitted to that hospital early Wednesday afternoon after being wounded during the attempt to demonstrate to demand better living conditions and the holding of the first local elections, was treated.
Augusto Manuel mentioned that the patient was taken by the police to that hospital unit, as having been picked up on the public road, victim of probable physical aggression.
The doctor, in a statement to the Angolan Public Television, said that the young man had been hit "with a blunt object", causing a trauma to his head, "with active bleeding and exposure of the brain mass.
This Friday, the doctor Maurílio Luiele assured that the information that the young demonstrator was victim of a head trauma was "false", insisting that he "did not arrive alive at the hospital" after being wounded with a firearm.
"He did not arrive alive at the hospital, it is not true, he died on the spot. The police arrived at the hospital afterwards. His companions took him to the hospital in desperation, and when they arrived at the hospital the clinical body confirmed that he was already dead," he stressed.
"But the police arrived later and took the companions away from the relationship with the clinical body and manipulated the information, and then conveyed the information that the young man was alive, but wounded, in order to later provide that information that had head trauma and not by gunshot wound, which is absolutely false," he stressed.
The vice-president of UNITA's parliamentary group also said that his party "strongly repudiates" the police repression of the demonstrators, and therefore advocates an "independent inquiry" into the death of the young demonstrator.
"We need to clarify this case, an independent inquiry yes, and as our police are already used, they are many cases like this, I think we need to put an end to this, that should be a normal medical-legal inquiry", he defended.
But, he noted, forensic medicine in Angola is the responsibility of the SIC (Criminal Investigation Service), an organ of the Ministry of the Interior, and "by corporativism it is almost impossible for the national police or the PGR to conduct an investigation of this kind.
The "ideal", he noted, "would be an inquiry conducted by the Attorney General's Office [PGR] but with the partition of independent entities, perhaps the Bar Association, human rights associations, or Amnesty International.
"Because there are already a lot of human rights violations and it's already being a lot of violence," he pointed out.
According to the deputy, the "battalion" of young people who "legitimately complain" for better living conditions "only tends to grow, not at the instigation of UNITA but for real difficulties that exist.
"This battalion tends to grow, and what is expected is that in the near future violence will increase, and if this police repression is not stopped, there is a risk of a massacre, which would be even more serious. I think we're still in time to prevent and prevent something like this from happening," concluded Maurílio Luiele.
