Angola must pay compensation to riot victims: local rights groups

Angolan civic groups said Thursday the government must pay reparations for the nearly two dozen people killed and 200 wounded in days of rioting in July that were violently put down by security forces.

Protests and looting erupted in the oil-rich southern African nation between July 28-30 on the sidelines of a taxi strike called to protest fuel price hikes.

In a new report, three civil society groups profiled some of the people, including a 14-year-old boy they said was shot by a police officer while out buying bread and an 18-year-old girl struck by a stray police bullet.

The report cited interior ministry figures that 22 people were killed although police said at the time that 30 people had lost their lives, including a police officer. Nearly 200 were wounded and 1,200 arrested.

The report by the Mudei, Handeka and Mizangala Tu Yenu Kupolo groups said the repression was "a brutal demonstration that the State continues to treat its citizens as enemies".

It demanded independent investigations into the deaths and injuries, and the prosecution of state agents involved in abuses.

"Full reparations are demanded for the victims and their families...," the report said, adding the unrest was an "expression of a profound social unease" in Angola, where around a third of the population lives below the international poverty line.

The costs of fuel increased earlier this year as the government lowered its subsidies under pressure from the IMF and World Bank.

In September, leading civil society groups, including Mudei and Handeka, urged UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to send a fact-finding mission to investigate the deadly crackdown.

Since the unrest, authorities have publicly released few details or follow-up although some of the hundreds who were arrested have been reportedly released on bail.