Rafael Marques de Morais. Alex Brenner for Index on Censorship. All rights reserved.Mass graves of miners who were buried
alive, women with their eyes and
genitals cut out of their bodies: these stories were just part of the exposé
into crimes surrounding the Angola diamond industry that journalist Rafael
Marques de Morais has tried to bring to world attention. Yet after an
absurd defamation trial, during which his key witnesses were not allowed to
give evidence, Marques has now been hit with a sentence that appears to be
trying to silence him.
Marques’ case is certainly out of the
ordinary. A lone warrior battling against the system and operating an
anti-corruption news site from his kitchen in Luanda, he is currently working
on his appeal after receiving a six-month
suspended sentence on 28 May. The injustice of this unexpected conviction,
which came days after the court had indicated charges had been dropped, has
been reported on by a scattering of journalists around the world. But more
needs to be done.
Index
on Censorship has called for the Angolan government to drop all charges
against Marques, and has sent an open letter to Angolan President José Eduardo
Dos Santos. Signatories range from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, author Neil
Gaiman and technology
entrepreneur Martha Lane Fox, to those who have
experienced censorship themselves, including Syrian political cartoonist Ali Ferzat and
Azerbaijani journalist Idrak Abbasov.
Anyone who has met Marques knows that he is
an extraordinary character. At Index on Censorship, we had the honour to host
him in London for a week when he came to pick up one of our Freedom
of Expression Awards in March. This was one week before his trial
commenced, yet he remained calm, resolute and an inspiration to all he met. I
remember catching a colleague’s eye as he gave a phone interview to one of the
many journalists who called wanting to hear his story. “I’m proud to go back
and fight this,” he said. “If they jail me, at least I can report on the
jails.” Even in Index’s line of work, this is not something you hear every day.
Since then, even for those who’ve been
following his case closely, it’s been hard to keep up. On the first day in
court, on 24 March, he was hit by 15 new charges. Then his case was adjourned
for a month. He had the prospect of reconciliation dangled before him and,
after much negotiation, snatched away. His website was brought down and his
computer hacked. There was what appeared to be a sudden dismissal, as all sides
seemed to come to an agreement. There followed a misguided weekend of
celebration, before, suddenly, the case was back on and he was sentenced
– and all without the chance to defend himself properly or present witnesses.
The whole process of his case has been as
nonsensical and maddening as it sounds; a trial by “a kangaroo court”, as
Marques has called it. Ultimately, his statement, after the apparent
settlement, was taken as an admission of guilt, which resulted in the public
prosecutor handing down a six-month suspended sentence. So far he has escaped
being locked up, but there is a two-year term on the sentence, meaning that if
he does anything “criminal” during this period, the jail sentence is
immediately applied. It’s a warning set to constantly hang over him, for every
word he writes.
What constitutes 'criminal' in Angola? It’s
hard to know. Marques’ book detailed allegations of more than 500 cases of
torture and 100 killings carried out by Angolan soldiers and private mining
company guards. Yet, somehow, Marques became the bad guy. As if he saw this
coming (and having been jailed before for calling the president a dictator),
Marques made the first move: by first raising a criminal complaint against
nine generals and company directors in Angola. He called for a full
investigation into alleged abuses. The generals and their business associates
then filed a lawsuit against Marques and his publisher for libel in Portugal.
When that fell apart, they took it back to Angola.
In the end, Marques was charged, not for
defamation, but for one of the surprise charges added later: malicious
prosecution. Malicious prosecution refers to deliberate falsification of facts.
“The public prosecutor put words in my mouth. He said that I had apologised,
and had admitted to have written falsehoods,” Marques told Index last week,
incensed about being “tricked”. As one legal expert told us, one of the main
complaints was that Marques should have conducted a full personal investigation
before calling for a state investigation.
You can read Marques’ book, in English and
Portuguese, on his publisher’s website, a brave independent outfit called Tinta-da-China,
based in Lisbon. It’s a shocking read. Marques writes about having reams of
investigation documents seized at the airport. He writes about appalling crimes
against women; their eyes and genitals cut out of their murdered bodies as
prospectors deem them to be talismans. During the trial, one of his key defence
witnesses, Linda Moises da Rosa, never got the chance to speak about her two
sons who, she says, were killed by security forces as they searched for
diamonds.
Angola took over the presidency of the Kimberley Process in November 2014, and
will be hosting its annual meeting in June. The United Nations-initiated
certification project was designed to prevent ‘conflict diamonds’ entering the
mainstream market. Angola’s civil war may be over, but there is still concern
that human-rights abuses in the industry are not being adequately addressed. US
jewellers Tiffany & Co were among those to sign Index on Censorship’s
letter to Angolan President José Eduardo Dos Santos, calling for Marques’
conviction to be dropped. Other
jewellers have also expressed concerns
about the Kimberley Process’ failings.
On the first day of Marques’ visit to
London in March, I remember sitting down at the table, and meeting for the
first time – alongside the
other winners – a Moroccan rapper, a Saudi documentary maker, a Kenyan
women’s rights activist, and a Hungarian investigative journalist. I remember
one of the first things Marques said: it was about the sudden relief of not
feeling like a pariah. Although he does have some support in Angola (with a
band of supporters
turning up outside the courtroom and some organising middle-of-the-night
protests to avoid detection), many treat him with suspicion, or simply prefer
to give him a wide berth. Even his 13-year-old son once assumed he was
unemployable as he spends all his time in front of a laptop at home.
It’s hard not to be moved and outraged by
Marques’ tale. Does international attention help? It can do. He’s told us it
can. And it’s worth a try. “Great news indeed!” he wrote in an email we
received two weeks ago, in that brief moment when we thought the case was
dismissed and justice, or a semblance of it, had prevailed. We only hope to get
similar good news soon. His work is vital and needs to be supported, not
silenced.