Angolan activist jailed for six years for ‘inciting rebellion’

A prominent Angolan activist who was accused of organising an anti-government protest in the oil-rich province of Cabinda was jailed on Monday for six years, his lawyer said.

Marcos Mavungo was arrested and detained on sedition charges in March, hours before a peaceful protest march against bad governance in the northern province.

He “was convicted of the crime of (instigating a) rebellion,” lawyer Francisco Lwemba told AFP by phone from Angola.

Mavungo was a former member of Mpalabanda, a group which was banned in 2006 after it produced human rights reports highlighting abuses by security forces in Cabinda province.

Amnesty International has described Mavungo as a prisoner of conscience.

Rights groups say activists and journalists are increasingly targeted by the regime of President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who has been in power since 1979.

Activist Rafael Marques was earlier this year given a six-month suspended jail sentence for defaming military generals in a book about violence in the country’s diamond mining industry.

Cabinda, an Angolan territory separated from the rest of the country by a strip of the Democratic Republic of Congo, accounts for 60 percent of the national oil production.

But most of its 300,000 residents live in poverty, and a separatist guerrilla movement has rattled the province for decades.