{"id":89410,"date":"2022-07-28T05:00:21","date_gmt":"2022-07-28T03:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/central-africa\/dr-congo\/former-angolan-president-dos-santos-dies\/"},"modified":"2022-07-28T05:00:22","modified_gmt":"2022-07-28T03:00:22","slug":"former-angolan-president-dos-santos-dies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/central-africa\/dr-congo\/former-angolan-president-dos-santos-dies\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Angolan President Dos Santos Dies"},"content":{"rendered":"

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After years of prolonged illness, the former president of Angola, Jos\u00e9 Eduardo Dos Santos,\u00a0died<\/a>\u00a0on Friday in Barcelona, Spain at age 79. A controversial figure, Dos Santos will be missed by many Angolans who praised him as the architect of the peace negotiations that ended the country\u2019s 27-year civil war in 2002. But to victims of human rights abuses during his 38-year rule, Dos Santos was a ruthless leader who did not hesitate to\u00a0use law enforcement agencies and the judicial system<\/a>\u00a0to intimidate his critics, independent journalists, and human rights defenders.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Before his retirement in 2017, Dos Santos was the second-longest serving president in Africa, having come to power in 1979. His rule was characterized by\u00a0unprecedented economic crisis<\/a>, a very poor and\u00a0unequal society<\/a>, and entrenched impunity for serious human rights violations, including\u00a0unlawful killings<\/a>, politically motivated detentions, and\u00a0crackdowns on the press<\/a>.<\/p>\n

His administration was notorious for persecuting activists, including\u00a0Rafael Marques<\/a>, who exposed a range of high-level corruption cases and human rights violations, and who also pursued sensitive investigations into human rights violations in Angola\u2019s diamond areas. In 2015, the Dos Santos-led government arrested a group of academics, students, and artists who were attending a book club to discuss peaceful protests and democracy. The authorities\u00a0charged<\/a>\u00a0them with crimes of \u201cpreparatory acts of rebellion\u201d and \u201cplotting against the president and state institutions.\u201d<\/p>\n

For decades, his administration ensured impunity for security force members implicated in\u00a0excessive use of force<\/a>, torture, and\u00a0enforced disappearance<\/a>, as well as mass killings. This includes those\u00a0allegedly responsible for the 2015 massacre<\/a>\u00a0of members of a Christian sect, known as the Seventh Day in the Light of the World, at Mount Sume in Huambo province. The same forces\u00a0were accused<\/a>\u00a0in 2012 by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights of abuses against Congolese migrants, including beatings, torture, and unlawful anal and vaginal searches.<\/p>\n

The legacy of human rights abuses during the Dos Santos era still haunts Angolans today, five years after he left power. His successor, President Jo\u00e3o<\/em>\u00a0Louren\u00e7o, has yet to introduce meaningful security sector reforms, emboldening forces to continue serious violations, including\u00a0violent attacks<\/a>\u00a0on activists and\u00a0crackdown<\/a>s of peaceful protests.<\/p>\n

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Human Rights Watch (HRW).<\/i><\/p>\n

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South Africa Today Africa \u2013 Central Africa Democratic Republic of Congo<\/a> News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Download logo After years of prolonged illness, the former president of Angola, Jos\u00e9 Eduardo Dos Santos,\u00a0died\u00a0on Friday in Barcelona, Spain at age 79. A controversial figure, Dos Santos will be missed by many Angolans who praised him as the architect of the peace negotiations that ended the country\u2019s 27-year civil war in 2002. But to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":89411,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/60d80c333445d54","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[278],"tags":[258,256,6556,4696,281,6868,10349,4691,450,279,280,257,2450,10350,254],"class_list":["post-89410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dr-congo","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-angolan","tag-central-africa","tag-democratic-republic-of-congo","tag-dies","tag-dos","tag-dr-congo","tag-dr-congo-news","tag-drc","tag-drc-news","tag-news","tag-president","tag-santos","tag-south-africa-today"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/60d80c333445d54","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}