Rafael Marques de Morais

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Rafael Marques de Morais (born August 31, 1971 in Luanda , Angola ) is an Angolan human rights activist , journalist and writer. He studied anthropology and journalism at the Goldsmiths Institute of the University of London (BA) and African Studies at Oxford University (MA) and became internationally known for reports on corruption in the government of Angola and the diamond industry. He runs the anti-corruption website MakaAngola.org.

"The lipstick of the dictatorship"

He wrote the article Presidência da República: O Epicentro de Corrupção em Angola (German: The Angolan Presidency: The Epicenter of Corruption). In 1999 he wrote the essay O Baton da Ditadura (German: “The lipstick of the dictatorship”) in which he sharply criticized President José Eduardo dos Santos . The title is a play on words: on the one hand, the word "batom" in Portuguese means lipstick, on the other hand, the word "baton" means the police's baton.

Because of this publication, Marques de Morais was questioned on October 13, 1999 by the Direcção Nacional de Investigação Criminal , (German: National Directorate for Criminal Investigations) and detained for several hours. He later gave an interview to Rádio Ecclésia , repeating his criticism of the dos Santos government. On October 16, 1999, twenty armed police officers arrested him, along with Aguiar dos Santos (editor of Agora) and Antonio José Freitas (Agora reporter). The charge was defamation.

Marques de Morais says dos Santos is responsible for the “destruction of the country (...) and the promotion of incompetence, embezzlement and corruption as political and social values” . He also describes President dos Santos as a dictator . On March 31, 2000, a court in the capital found Luanda Freitas innocent, but Aguiar and Marques de Morais found guilty. The court sentenced Aguiar to two months in prison and fined 6,000 US dollars . Marques de Morais was found guilty of violating Articles 43, 44, 45 and 46 of Law 22/91 and was sentenced to six months' imprisonment. He then refused to eat for eight days to protest the ban on speaking to his lawyer Anacleta Perreira and seeing his family. The police released him on bail on November 25, but forbade him to leave Luanda or speak to journalists.

In 2000 he received the Percy Qoboza Award from the National Association of Black Journalists in the United States for “outstanding courage” . In 2006 he received the Courage Award from The Train Foundation, formerly the Northcote Parkinson Fund. He has also written several reports on human rights abuses in the diamond trade: Hunger Harvest in Angola's Diamond Fields (2008), Operation Kissonde: The Diamonds of Misery and Humiliation (2006) and Lunda: The Stones of Death (2005) co-funded by the author Rui Campos. In 2015 he received the Allard Prize from the University of British Columbia in Canada for his extraordinary courage in the fight against corruption.

Acquittal for marques

On June 21, 2017, Rafael Marques was arrested again. After posting an article on the anti-government anti-corruption website MakaAngola six months earlier about the alleged illegal land acquisition by Attorney General João Maria de Sousa, he was charged with "defamation of a state organ and violation of public authority." However, under the new President João Lourenço , he was acquitted by a court on July 6, 2018. In the almost three-hour verdict, judge Josina Ferreira Falcão emphasized the freedom of the press, which also requires public officials to be closely monitored and criticized, and that it is bad for a society that wants progress to have bad news to punish. This ruling is seen as a great victory for press freedom in Angola. A few weeks earlier, on May 22, 2018, he was named the 70th "Freedom Hero" by the International Press Institute . At the end of 2018, President Lourenço invited him to a four-hour conversation, during which he publicly encouraged Marques to continue his revelations about corruption cases.

Works

  • Diamantes de Sangue: Corrupção e Tortura em Angola (Blood diamonds: Corruption and torture in Angola) , Tinta da China, 2011, ISBN 978-989-671-085-9 , 240 pages

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jornalista Rafael Marques fala sobre a situação política em Angola na 'rentrée' do BE expresso.pt , August 30, 2018, accessed on October 8, 2019
  2. ^ Presidência da República: O Epicentro da Corrupção em Angola esquerda.net, text by Rafael Marques, published in makaangola.org
  3. ↑ The Lipstick of Dictatorship ( Memento from April 4, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
  4. ↑ Original text "O Baton da Ditadura" (Portuguese)
  5. ↑ Marques gets six months for defaming president, Committee to Protect Journalists (English)
  6. ↑ The Train Foundation: Prize for Civil Courage (English)
  7. ↑ Lundas - The stones of death, Human rights abuses in the Lunda provinces, 2004 (English)
  8. ↑ Angolan Journalists' Acquittal a Victory for Free Speech hrw.org , July 6, 2018, accessed October 7, 2019
  9. ↑ Rafael Marques from Angola named the 70th IPI Press Freedom Hero ipi.media , May 22, 2018, accessed on October 7, 2019
  10. ↑ A man vacates on sueddeutsche.de , July 12, 2019, accessed on October 7, 2019

See also

personal data
SURNAME Marques de Morais, Rafael
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Marques, Rafael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Angolan human rights activist, journalist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH August 31, 1971
PLACE OF BIRTH Luanda , Angola