The arrest of anti-corruption activist Sarah Wykes in the Angolan province of Cabinda has highlighted Angola’s ruthless treatment of its critics. Wykes, who works for the international NGO Global Witness, which aims to increase transparency in extractive industries, has been accused of espionage by the Angolan authorities and is forbidden to leave the country.
Angolan police arrested Wykes on February 18th in her hotel room in Cabinda. She was in Angola to research recent progress on transparency in the state’s oil sector. Global Witness has published a number of reports detailing abuses of oil wealth by the Angolan government. It has said that every year from 1997 to 2001, $1,7-billion in Angolan oil revenue was unaccounted for.
While she has been released on bail and allowed to return to the capital, Luanda, Wykes has not been given permission to leave the country. Global Witness has called for the charges against her to be dropped and for her to be allowed to return home to the United Kingdom.
According to Global Witness, Wykes has had the charges verbally explained to her but has not received any formal documentation relating to them. No evidence of espionage has been put forward to her either, says the NGO.
”We don’t actually know why Sarah has been arrested,” said Diarmid O’Sullivan, a Global Witness campaigner. ”This is a real mystery. This was her second visit to Angola. She was travelling on a visa issued by the Angolan government. She certainly wasn’t doing anything that can be remotely described as espionage.”
According to O’Sullivan, Wykes had planned to meet with various members of civil society, government and representatives of oil companies to get ”on the ground” information about conditions of transparency in Angola’s oil industry. ”On these sorts of trips we [Global Witness] typically meet with a wide range of people and there is nothing secretive about it,” he added.
Fernando Macedo, a member of Wykes’s legal team, said Wykes is being held for alleged contravention of Angolan law relating to crimes against state security. He said that her legal team does not believe, however, that there is sufficient evidence to prosecute her. Wykes’s lawyer has appealed the decision to prevent her returning home while investigations into the allegations of espionage are under way. A decision from the Angolan attorney general’s office is expected next week.
Angola, the second largest oil producer in Africa after Nigeria, derives 60% of its oil revenue from Cabinda province, which shares no borders with the country and is surrounded by the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Congo. Secessionist groups like the fragmented Frente para o Libertacao do Enclave de Cabinda (Flec) have largely resisted Angolan governance in the exclave. A peace deal in January between Angola and one Flec splinter group has largely been dismissed by Cabindans.
A website proclaiming veteran Flec leader N’Zita Henriques Tiago the president of Cabinda, and calling itself the official website of the Republic of Cabinda, has posted calls for the release of Wykes.
Angola came under fire last year from international rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) after Angolan authorities arrested anti-corruption demonstrators protesting outside the French embassy in Luanda in November.
In a report on the incident, HRW accused Angolan authorities of targeting the critics who expose corruption and mismanagement problems and called on the state to explain the spending of its oil revenue.
