Human Rights Watch (HRW) has condemned the beating of activists, Nito Alves and Laurinda Goveia, by the police in Angola.

It was gathered that police severely beat the well-known activists, who are both in critical condition, and arrested one other activist, Luaty Beirao.

Footage posted on social media shows people running through Luanda’s streets, seeking places to hide as police fired live bullets and teargas at them.

The rights group said, according to witnesses, officers also beat protesters with batons, threw them inside police vans, and drove them away to unknown locations.

‘The police shooting at peaceful protesters is outrageous as well as criminal’, Senior Africa Researcher at HRW Zenaida Machado said.

‘The government should thoroughly investigate the police use of unnecessary lethal force and hold those responsible to account’.

It was learnt that in the early hours of 11 November 11, thousands of heavily armed police and plainclothes officers were deployed in the streets of Luanda ahead of an anti-government protest called by civil society groups to demand jobs and local elections in 2021.

Police set up roadblocks and closed the main roads to the populous Cacuaco, Benfica, and Viana neighbourhoods.

There was a massive presence of police with dogs near the Santa Ana Cemetery, the meeting point chosen by the demonstration’s organisers.

Firearms are not an appropriate tool for the policing of assemblies, and must never be used simply to disperse an assembly…’, the UN Human Rights Committee, which monitors compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, said in a general comment.

‘Any use of firearms by law enforcement officials in the context of assemblies must be limited to targeted individuals in circumstances in which it is strictly necessary to confront an imminent threat of death or serious injury’.

Source: Human Rights Watch

Photo source: AFP