Angola has started banning churches, as the country’s
government has reportedly banned nine church groups operating in central Huambo
province, where the main opposition party said hundreds were killed this month
in a police crackdown on a rebel Christian sect.
The Huambo provincial government and the national police
have declared the fringe Christian groups illegal under new rules that require
denominations to have 100,000 registered members spread across at least a third
of Angola's 18 provinces, the state-run Jornal de Angola told Reuters.
Rights groups say the bans are an example of the increasing
suppression of civil liberties and freedom of speech under President Jose
Eduardo dos Santos, who has ruled the mostly Catholic southern African country
for 36 years.
"Government has control over the main church movements
and it understands what influence they have," said Elias Isaac, country
director at the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa. When you no longer
belong to the formal system that the government feels it can control, you
become a threat."
The bans come two weeks after Angolan police said nine of
its officers were shot dead during raids in Huambo province aimed at capturing
Jose Kalupeteka, leader of the illegal sect "The Light of the World",
which has an estimated 3,000 members.
Police said popular anti-authority preacher Kalupeteka was
later captured and only 13 sect members were killed. However, the main
opposition party UNITA said police and military killed more than 1,000
civilians in a backlash against the millenarian sect, which predicts the world
will end on Dec. 31 and discourages engagement with politics.
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