Fuel price protests in Angola this week left 22 dead while 1,200 people were arrested
The office of Angolan President Joao Lourenco released the death toll in a statement and said that 197 people were also injured in the two days of violence that began on Monday and spread from the capital, Luanda, to at least six other provinces in the southern African nation.
Authorities have often been accused of clamping down harshly on protests to silence dissent in Angola, an oil-rich nation on Africa's Atlantic coast where the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola party has been in power for 50 years — since independence from Portugal in 1975.
Earlier this month, the government said it was removing subsidies on diesel and raising the price by more than 30%. That prompted minibus taxis, a common method of transport for Angolans, to hike their prices by as much as 50%.
Lourenco's office said dozens of shops were looted and vehicles were damaged in rioting by people angry at the price of fuel and the rising cost of living. The army was deployed to restore order as the riots 'triggered a climate of widespread insecurity,' the statement said.
It did not elaborate on how the people died.
Protests against the price hikes in Angola first erupted two weeks ago, when Human Rights Watch accused the police of excessive force against what was a largely peaceful demonstration. Police unnecessarily fired tear gas and rubber bullets and assaulted protesters in those demonstrations, the rights group said.
___
AP Africa news: https://apnews.com/hub/africa
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
35 minutes ago
- Yahoo
South Africans protest Israel's military campaign in Gaza
STORY: :: South Africans protest with cooking pots as they denounce Israel's military campaign in Gaza :: Cape Town, South Africa :: August 1, 2025 Demonstrators carried banners reading 'Never Again for Anyone', 'Stop the Genocide', and 'Gaza is Starving', while others quoted British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, accusing him of supporting Israel's blockade: 'Keir Starmer says Israel has the right to cut off water.' The protest was organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which has held several demonstrations across South Africa in recent months. Protesters accused Britain and other Western nations of complicity in the humanitarian crisis. South Africa has long been a vocal critic of Israel's actions in Gaza, with the government calling for an immediate ceasefire and full humanitarian access. Israel says its operations are aimed at dismantling Hamas' military capabilities and securing the release of hostages.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Mike Huckabee Goes to Gaza and Declares Everything Is A-OK
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee met with the U.S.-backed aid organization that's been setting death traps for starving Palestinians. Huckabee said Friday morning that he and special envoy Steve Witkoff visited Gaza to 'learn the truth' about the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, or GHF, whose aid sites have become the locus of mass casualty events on a near-daily basis. The United Nations reported Thursday that at least 859 Palestinians have been killed while attempting to receive aid at GHF sites between May 27 and July 31, mostly by the Israeli military. Huckabee seemed pleased after receiving a briefing from the Israeli military and meeting with GHF workers on the ground. 'GHF delivers more than one million meals a day, an incredible feat!' Huckabee wrote in a post on X. But GHF has now been implicated in hundreds of Palestinians deaths, as the widespread famine in Gaza worsens. 'Israeli forces are not only deliberately starving Palestinian civilians, but they are now gunning them down almost every day as they desperately seek food for their families,' said Belkis Wille, associate crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch. 'US-backed Israeli forces and private contractors have put in place a flawed, militarized aid distribution system that has turned aid distributions into regular bloodbaths.' GHF's funding sources are opaque, but Trump said Friday that Israel had agreed to match a $30 million donation, according to Reuters. GHF has also been criticized as systematically ineffectual. Anthony Aguilar, a retired 25-year U.S. Army veteran and Green Beret who'd been working for the group as a security contractor described GHF as 'an enterprise that has failed from the beginning.' 'It's abhorrent. If it weren't so tragic, it would be comedy. It's not comedy, because it is absolutely tragic,' he told Mother Jones. Aguilar also alleged that his fellow contractors used nonlethal and lethal munitions in unauthorized ways, cheering as they fired blindly into a crowd of Palestinians. For his part, Huckabee doesn't seem all that interested in easing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza—seeing that it would require him to acknowledge Palestinians' humanity. Earlier this week, Huckabee said that France's decision to recognize a Palestinian state was 'like letting the Nazis have a victory after World War II.' And for all of Trump's too-little too-late statements about the starvation in Gaza, he seems to feel about the same. After Canada issued a statement backing a two-state solution Thursday, Trump lashed out in a Truth Social post, threatening a prospective trade deal between the U.S. and Canada. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Lawyer says he's not been allowed to see 5 immigrants deported by the US to a prison in Eswatini
MANZINI, Eswatini (AP) — Five immigrants deported by the United States to Eswatini in a secret deal last month had served their criminal sentences before they were sent to be held in a prison in the African country, a lawyer working on their cases said Friday. The Eswatini lawyer also said the men from Cuba, Jamaica, Laos, Yemen and Vietnam sent to southern Africa under President Donald Trump's third-country deportation program have been denied access to legal representation while being held in Eswatini's main maximum-security prison. The lawyer, Sibusiso Nhlabatsi, said he hasn't been allowed to see the men and that he filed court papers Thursday against the head of Eswatini's correctional services department and the country's attorney general, demanding access to them. He said he is representing them on behalf of lawyers in the U.S. and was prevented from seeing them by Eswatini prison officials on July 25. It's unlawful for the men, who have been in Eswatini for around two weeks, to be denied access to a lawyer, he added. The Eswatini government has said the men will be held in solitary confinement until they can be deported to their home countries, which could take up to a year. 'They have served their sentences,' Nhlabatsi told The Associated Press. 'If a person has committed a crime and they have served a sentence, why are you then keeping them in a prison?' Nhlabatsi said the men have not been able to communicate with their families or receive visitors since arriving in Eswatini, although prison officials said they were in the process of setting up devices to allow them to speak with their families. He alleged their ongoing detention could have legal implications for Eswatini, a small country bordering South Africa and one of the world's last absolute monarchies, ruled by a king accused of cracking down on dissent. The Trump administration has come under scrutiny for its choice of African countries to strike deportation deals with. It deported eight immigrants described as violent criminals to South Sudan in early July in an operation that was halted by a legal challenge in the U.S. The eight were held for weeks in a converted shipping container at an American military base in nearby Djibouti while the case was decided. A Supreme Court ruling eventually cleared the way for them to be sent to South Sudan. Both South Sudan, which is in danger of tipping into civil war, and Eswatini have poor rights records and governments accused of being repressive. Critics say the deportees, who the administration says were in the U.S. illegally, will likely be denied due process in those countries. The five sent to Eswatini were also described by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as serious criminals. Their convictions included murder and child rape, the department said in social media posts, calling them 'uniquely barbaric." The department, which did not say if they had completed their sentences, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday. An Eswatini government spokesman also declined to comment on Nhlabatsi's allegations, saying it was now a matter for the courts. Nhlabatsi said the deportees are being held at the Matsapha Correctional Complex near the administrative capital, Mbabane, the same prison said to hold pro-democracy activists on trumped up charges. The government has declined to say where the five men are being held, citing security concerns. Eswatini's statement about the five men ultimately being deported to their home countries appears to contradict claims by the U.S. that their home countries refused to take the men back. Activists in Eswatini have demanded that the details of the agreement with the U.S. be made public but the government has said they are 'classified.' South Sudan has also declined to give details of its agreement to take deportees from the U.S. ___ AP news on the Trump administration:
