Journalist and human rights activist Rafael Marques de Morais (Photo: Sean Gallagher/Index on Censorship)
Angolan investigative journalist and Index on Censorship award-winner Rafael Marques de Morais was handed down a six-month suspended sentence in Luanda on Thursday 28 May 2015, less than a week after celebrating an apparent dismissal of all charges.
Last Thursday, it had been widely understood that the case against him – in which he was accused of defaming several generals in a 2011 book about human-rights violations in the diamond industry – had been dropped. All parties appeared to have reached an agreement, whereby Marques would not republish his book but could continue his work.
However, the public prosecutor said on Monday 25 May 2015 that Marques’ statement was an admission of guilt and called for him to receive a suspended sentence.
Speaking to Index ahead of the sentencing, Marques said: “The public prosecutor put words in my mouth. He said that I had apologised, and had admitted to have written falsehoods.”
Marques’ witnesses, including a mother of a victim who was hacked to death in the Lundas mining region, were never given the chance to speak in court, after the case was “dismissed” in a move that Marques now believes was “a trick”.
Marques has been convicted for malicious prosecution, not defamation. The malicious prosecution charges (saying that he intentionally submitted false evidence) were added – in another unexpected move – on his first day in court in March.
The six-month suspended sentence has a term of two years, during which if he engages in any behaviour the state deems as criminal, the sentence will be implemented. Marques will be launching an appeal.
Over 50 signatories – including Index on Censorship, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other international NGOs – have written a letter to Angolan President José Eduardo Dos Santos, demanding urgent action on Marques’ case and calling for Angola’s criminal defamation laws to be abolished.
In March, just days before the trial started, Marques attended Index on Censorship’s Freedom of Expression Awards in London, where he received the journalism award for his courageous and vital investigations. In a speech, he said: “I am proud and honoured to stand up against such a mighty power to enable many of the victims to speak out through my reports, which I have been producing for the past 10 years.”
Index on Censorship’s CEO Jodie Ginsberg said: “We are appalled to hear that Rafael has been sentenced after an absurd process. This is a clear violation of rights to free expression, to a free press and to a fair trial. We are extremely concerned not only about Rafael, whose work is so incredibly important, but also that cases like this are being used to deter others from speaking out. We feel a suspended sentence over two years will curb his ongoing work, which has recently included highlighting Angola’s press restrictions and reporting on a massacre of members of a sect by police forces.”
Journalist and human rights activist Rafael Marques de Morais (Photo: Alex Brenner for Index on Censorship)
When you go up against the big guns of any state, you know they will throw everything at you. Even when they tell you that you have won, you shouldn’t believe a word they say.
Investigative journalist Rafael Marques de Morais has learned this hard lesson in the last few days.
For months the journalist, who reported on killings and torture related to Angola’s diamond industry, has been awaiting a court appearance on criminal defamation charges that could have resulted in a nine-year prison sentence and a fine of up to £800,000.
As those months went by, additional charges were added, and the pressure on the journalist and his family ramped up and up. Then at the end of last week, an Angolan court announced it was going to drop all the criminal defamation charges against him.
Marques celebrated the “good news” with his supporters. But days later the Angola court system did a complete swivel and decided that instead it was planning to find him guilty and punish him with a prison sentence.
The tension-filled story has enough twists and turns to make it into a Hollywood thriller one day, but this is real and for now Marques has to live through the incredible pressure it puts on him and his family.
Marques said today: “I am in disbelief for what I heard in court. The public prosecutor put words into my mouth. He said that I had apologised, and had admitted to have written falsehoods.”
He added: “My witnesses were scheduled to be heard on May 22, and I had brought eight victims from the Lundas. The generals were supposed to be heard on May 21, and never showed up. What I stated in court, on May 21, is on the record and of public knowledge. I was asked to make a short statement to enable to generals and their companies, as well as the state to drop the charges against me.”
Marques, an internationally recognised journalist, added: ” All parties agreed that there was no further need for witnesses to be heard or evidence to be entered. By Angolan law, in a case of defamation, slander or criminal libel, once explanations are offered in court, and found to be satisfactory for all the parties, the grounds for accusation cease to exist.”
Without his bravery in exposing uncomfortable truths in his book Blood Diamonds: Corruption and Torture in Angola, many people would not know of the terrifying practises in the diamond mines of Angola, an industry in which many of the most powerful generals of the country own shares. Those generals have been pursuing libel claims against Marques for the stories in his book.
Angola’s unregulated diamond industry and its connections to the nation’s 27-year-long civil war which followed independence have drawn international concern.
Marques is just one man standing alone, who has taken incredible risks to report on the tragedy of 500 cases of torture and 100 murders related to the gem industry and to get the news out to the rest of the world. When you meet Marques, as I did this year when he received an Index on Censorship award, you realise he is driven by an incredible sense of hope. He believes incredibly strongly that his reporting can help go some way to changing the conditions that the people of Lundas are suffering.
When you meet someone who is that brave and committed, then you realise that most of us never take a decision as difficult and filled with personal consequences as Marques has.
But as this very brave man said in March when he was describing his work; “They can lock me up, but they don’t get to silence me.” Let’s hope that they don’t do either.
We, the undersigned individuals and organizations, are writing to you to express our strong concerns about the prosecution on criminal defamation charges of journalist Rafael Marques de Morais. Despite what was understood to have been a negotiated agreement between Mr. Marques de Morais and government authorities late last week, we are deeply concerned that that agreement is now being reversed. Instead, it appears that the court will issue a verdict in the case later this week; a conviction could result in a prison sentence and the indefinite revocation of his passport.
This case reflects a broader deterioration in the environment for freedom of expression in Angola, including the increasing use of criminal defamation lawsuits against journalists and routine police abuse of, and interference with, journalists, activists, and protesters peacefully exercising their right to freedom of expression. We urge you to take immediate steps to reverse these worrying trends.
Mr. Marques de Morais has been regularly and repeatedly harassed by state authorities because of his work. The 24 criminal defamation charges lodged against Marques, for example, are only the latest attempt by Angolan officials to silence his reporting. Marques has alleged a range of high-level corruption cases and human rights violations in his blog, and pursued sensitive investigations into human rights violations in Angola’s diamond areas.[1] We are unaware of any serious effort by the Angolan attorney-general’s office to impartially and credibly investigate the allegations of the crimes for which he has been charged.
Your government appears to be using Angola’s criminal defamation laws to deter Mr. Marques de Morais from his human rights reporting. By doing so, the government is violating his right to freedom of expression as protected by Article 9 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Preventing him from reporting on human rights violations is contrary to the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights Defenders.
The prosecution of Mr. Marques de Morais also stands in opposition to the December 2014 judgment of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which ruled in the case of Lohé Issa Konaté v. Burkina Faso that except in very serious and exceptional circumstances, “violations of laws on freedom speech and the press cannot be sanctioned by custodial sentences.”[2] Laws criminalizing defamation, whether of public or private individuals, should never be applied, including in these circumstances given that Marques was raising concerns about human rights abuses in the country’s diamond mines. Criminal defamation laws are open to easy abuse, as the case against Marques demonstrates, resulting in disproportionately harsh consequences. As repeal of criminal defamation laws in an increasing number of countries shows, such laws are not necessary for protecting reputations.
We strongly urge you to take immediate steps to make clear that the government of Angola respects the right of journalists, activists, and others to enjoy their right to freedom of expression. Furthermore we encourage you to immediately pursue efforts to abolish Angola’s criminal defamation laws.
Thank you for your attention to this important matter.
Sincerely yours,
Sarah Margon, Washington Director, Human Rights Watch
Steven Hawkins, Executive Director, Amnesty International USA
Teresa Pina, Executive Director, Amnesty International Portugal
A. Lemon, Emeritus Fellow, Mansfield College, University of Oxford
Aline Mashiach, Head Commercial and Marketing Manager, Royalife LTD
Andreas Missbach, Joint-managing director, Berne Declaration, Switzerland
Art Kaufman, Senior Director, World Movement for Democracy
Beata Styś-Pałasz, P.E. Senior Project Manager, State of Florida Department of Transportation
Ben Knighton, Co-ordinator of the African Studies Research Group, Oxford Centre for Mission Studies (OCMS)
Carl Gershman, President, National Endowment for Democracy
Cécile Bushidi, PhD student, SOAS, University of London
Cléa Kahn-Sriber, Head of Africa Desk, Reporters Without Borders
Cobus de Swardt, Managing Director, Transparency International
Daniel Calingaert, Executive Vice President, Freedom House
Deborah Posel, Institute for Humanities in Africa (HUMA), University of Cape Town
Diana Jeater, Editor, Journal of Southern African Studies, Lecturer in African History, Goldsmiths, University of London
Dorothee Boulanger, Doctoral candidate, King’s College London
Dylan Tromp, Director, Integrate: Business & Human Rights
E.A. Brett, Professor of International Development, London School of Economics
Ery Shin, Doctoral candidate in English literature, University of Oxford
Fiona Armitage
Garth Meintjes, Executive Director, International Senior Lawyers Project
Henning Melber, Senior Advisor/Director emeritus, The Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation
Hilary Owen, Professor of Portuguese and Luso-African Studies, University of Manchester
Jaqueline Mitchell, Commissioning Editor, James Currey
Jodie Ginsberg, CEO, Index on Censorship
Kathryn Brooks, African Studies Centre, University of Oxford
Kenneth Hughes, University of Cape Town
Lara Pawson, freelance writer, Author of In the Name of the People: Angola’s Forgotten Massacre
Lotte Hughes, Senior Research Fellow, History Department, and The Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies Faculty of Arts, The Open University
Margot Leger, MSc Student, African Studies
Mary Lawlor, Founder and Executive Director, Front Line Defenders
Matthew de la Hey, MBA Candidate, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford
Merle Lipton, Research Fellow, King’s College London
Michael Ineichen, Program Manager & Human Rights Council Advocacy Director, International Service for Human Rights (ISHR)
Michael Lipton, Research Professor of Economics, Sussex University
Michael Savage, Cape Town, South Africa
Michelle Kelly, Faculty of English, University of Oxford
Nic Cheeseman, Associate Professor in African Politics, Department of Politics and IR and the African Studies Centre, University of Oxford
Patrycja Stys, Co-Convenor, Oxford Central Africa Forum (OCAF), University of Oxford
Phil Bloomer, Executive Director, Business & Human Rights Resource Centre
Phillip Rothwell, King John II Professor of Portuguese, University of Oxford
Raymond Baker, President, Global Financial Integrity
Roger Southall, Professor Emeritus, Department of Sociology, University of the Witwatersrand
Santiago A. Canton, Executive Director of Partners for Human Rights, Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights
Simon Taylor, Director, Global Witness
Sue Valentine, Africa Program Coordinator, Committee to Protect Journalists
Suzanne Nossel, Executive Director, PEN American Center
William Beinart, Director, African Studies Centre, University of Oxford
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Adão Adriano António, Attorney General of the Republic and supervisor of the central Huambo province
Lucas Miguel Janota, Magistrate of the Public Ministry
Last week, a court in Angola indicated that libel charges against the anti-corruption campaigner would be dropped, but on Monday 25 May 2015 the public prosecutor said he would proceed with a conviction.
“This backtracking by Angola in the case of Rafael Marques de Morais is outrageous,” said Index on Censorship CEO Jodie Ginsberg. “Rafael’s investigations into human rights abuses in Angola are crucial and should not be impeded.”
On Monday 25 May, Marques said he felt “tricked” in the wake of last week’s deal he had secured with the generals, according to AFP.
“After all this, the state asks that I be sentenced, saying that I had failed to give evidence,” Marques was quoted as saying as he left the courtroom.
David Mendes, Marques de Morais’ lawyer, told AFP that the prosecution is seeking a one-month suspended sentence despite the agreement between the parties. The verdict in the case is expected 28 May.
The new developments are the latest twist in the case against Marques de Morais, who was being sued for libel by a group of generals in connection to his work exposing corruption and serious human rights violations connected to the diamond trade in his native Angola.
The case was directly linked to Marques de Morais’ 2011 book Blood Diamonds: Torture and Corruption in Angola. In it, he recounted 500 cases of torture and 100 murders of villagers living near diamond mines, carried out by private security companies and military officials. He filed charges of crimes against humanity against seven generals, holding them morally responsible for atrocities committed. After his case was dropped by the prosecution, the generals retaliated with a series of libel lawsuits in Angola and Portugal.
Marques de Morais originally faced nine charges of defamation, but on his first court appearance on 23 March was handed down an additional 15 charges. The proceedings were marked by heavy police presence, and five people were arrested. The trial opened just days after he was named joint winner of the 2015 Index Award for journalism.
The parties had been negotiating to try and find some “common ground”, Marques de Morais told Index in late April, but the talks broke down. His case was postponed to 14 May while the talks were ongoing.
The resumption of the trial came amid allegations of a massacre of members of a religious sect that Marques de Morais reported on for The Guardian. MakaAngola, Marques de Morais’ investigative journalism site, was knocked offline for a short period after The Guardian article.
