An Angolan journalist has been given a six-month suspended jail term for pissing off the wrong guys.

Rafael Marques de Morais is an anti-corruption activist in Angola who wrote a book that revealed the human rights abuses occurring in diamond fields, which he claims were being perpetrated by soldiers and security guards. Now, he’s being punished for defaming army Generals. It seems Angola's Generals are not too fond of their extracurricular activities coming to light.

Last week, the journalist believed he would be able to settle out of court after holding a private meeting with the Generals. According to Marques, he struck a deal agreeing to tell the court that he had never spoken directly to the Generals and they weren’t necessarily culpable. He was supposed to explain that he simply wanted to expose the suffering of the Lundas people.

Here’s where it gets weird. Despite the supposed agreement, prosecutors suddenly asked for a suspended one-month sentence. Then, the Judge made things worse, imposing a six-month sentence suspended for two years.  

So what happened? The journalist has some ideas. “I think the judge was a pawn in this. The Generals told me they had already talked to the judge and the Attorney General of the Republic to make the charges go away. Obviously they lied because they were fully aware of what was happening.”

He further explained, “They managed to avoid a court appearance. It was humiliating for them to be sitting there. With this manoeuvring they managed to extricate themselves from a court appearance and prevent my witnesses giving them all the evidence. I was convicted without any body of evidence.”

Human rights organizations Amnesty International as well as  the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights agree this is a gross abuse of the journalist’s human rights.

“Amnesty International believes this prosecution is politically motivated and designed to silence an activist dedicated to shining the light on corruption, abuses of power and human rights violations in Angola. There must be no further attempts to stifle his work through a prison term, prohibitively large fine, the on-going threat of a suspended sentence, or the seizure of his passport which would restrict his freedom of movement,” said Deprose Muchena, Amnesty International’s Director for Southern Africa.

Echoing that statement, Jeffrey Smith, the Africa programme officer at the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, said, “This is obviously part of a larger attempt to stifle human rights reporting in Angola, and they are using Rafael Marques to set an example. In doing so, Angola is violating the African charter on human and peoples’ rights, as well as numerous other international human rights conventions which the country is legally bound to follow.”

So sketchy. Without brave journalists like Marques exposing some of the world’s uglier truths, we’d all be blissfully ignorant, likely contributing to human rights abuses and injustices either passively or actively. We NEED people like Marques to continue to do the work that they do, which is why it’s unacceptable that the court is trying to sentence him.

I’m with you, Marques.