His Excellency Jose Eduardo dos Santos
President of the People’s Republic of Angola
Luanda, Angola
Vienna, 30 October 1999
Your Excellency,
The International Press Institute (IPI) is deeply concerned about Rafael Marques, a highly respected Angolan journalist who writes for the Luandan daily Agora and Reuters news agency, among others.
IPI has been informed that police came to Marques’ home on October 16 and brought him into detention. On October 14, he was charged with defaming the president for having referred to you as a dictator in a July 3 article published in Agora newspaper. As you are no doubt aware, the article in question, entitled, “The Big Stick of Dictatorship”, claims that you are “responsible for the destruction of the country and the promotion of corruption”.
On October 26, the Angolan attorney general officially refused a bail application. No further information is available on the reasons for the refusal, and according to Angolan law, Marques can be held in detention for fifteen days without being brought to trial. The authorities have also yet to decide whether to grant Marques access to his lawyer and family while still in detention. It is believed that he is on hunger strike.
Marques’lawyer, Luis Nascimento, has indicated to the Media Institute of Southern Africa that there have been at least two procedural irregularities in the continued detention of Marques. The first is that he has not been allowed access to his lawyer or family, and the second was that the attorney general had refused to attend to an application for bail, several days after it had been prepared, apparently because the attorney general was “attending a conference”.
We have been informed that Marques has been charged under Angola’s notorious Law 7/78, also known as the Law on Crimes Against State Security. IPI believes that Law 7/78 violates Article 35 of the 1992 Angolan Constitution, which guarantees the right to freedom of expression. However, the absence of a functioning Constitutional Court in Angola means that Law 7/78 cannot be challenged at this time. The charge against Marques carries a two to eight year prison sentence.
IPI, the global network of leading journalists, editors and publishers, strongly condemns Marques’ incommunicado detention and demands his immediate release, either unconditionally or on bail. We furthermore protest against the procedural irregularities surrounding Marques’ detention and we call on you to ensure that the due process of the law is complied with and that the rights of the detainee are upheld.
Moreover, IPI firmly believes that pressing charges of criminal defamation against a president undermines a democracy and serves primarily to stifle free debate and freedom of expression. Courts all around the world have accepted as an integral part of democracy that those who hold public office must always be open to public scrutiny and criticism. This action seeks to punish Marques for expressing his views on the government and the president in particular; an action which evidently runs counter to many international treaties to which Angola is a signatory. If you believe your reputation has been wrongfully harmed, we urge you to consider right of reply options to counter the alleged defamation.
I thank you for your kind attention and eagerly await your prompt response.
Yours sincerely,
Johann P. Fritz
Director
