The price Rafael Marques de Morais has paid to be a journalist is high.
Dedicating his career to investigating corruption Angola, in 1999 he published The Lipstick of the Dictatorship, a significant criticism of Angola’s long-standing president José Eduardo dos Santos. The result was 43 days in jail – 11 of which were spent in solitary confinement without food or water.
Undeterred, he continued to write and publish where he could, and in 2011 after years of investigation he revealed the horrors and corruption of the country’s diamond trade.
Today he faces a $1.6m libel trial brought by seven generals he exposed in the book Blood Diamonds: Torture and Corruption in Angola.
We have to fight, inch by inch, for the right to do our job
The book is a harrowing read detailing 500 cases of torture and 100 murders of villagers living in the vicinity of the diamond mines in the Cuango and Xá-Muteba districts.
Marques de Morais filed crimes against humanity charges against the seven Angolan generals as a result of his investigation, but is now being counter-sued for $1.6m. The trial – which has been looming over him after several postponements – finally begins next week.
“I lodged the criminal complaint against them because it’s the norm that leaders in authoritarian countries persecute and prosecute their citizens for telling the truth,” he said during a trip to London, where his defiant reporting is being honoured by Index on Censorship, who have shortlisted him for a journalism award.
He’d spent years convincing victims and witnesses to go on record. “This is the kind of journalism that’s needed in a place like Angola, where reporting and investigating alone are not enough. You have to take it to the next level, to act on behalf of your sources and the subjects of your stories.”
Ten journalists have been murdered in Angola since 1992, including a pro-opposition radio presenter, Alberto Graves, who was shot in 2010. The country scores low on civil liberties and political rights according to Freedom House who have catalogued “state-backed intimidation of protest leaders, scores of arrests, and the violent dispersal of demonstrations.”
Human rights activists have also been targeted: in November last year student Laurinda Gouveia was beaten for two hours by a group of police officers for taking part in an anti-government demonstration.
In this climate of oppression, free expression is nearly impossible. “A journalist has first to fight, inch by inch, for the right to do his or her job. So, you have to be an activist in order to be a journalist,” he says.
The internet could be the last frontier in the battle for freedom of expression
And the situation is getting worse. “In the early days we had a small, close-knit but vibrant community of journalists who were extremely vocal and very open in denouncing what was happening in the country. It was a force to be reckoned with,” he says.
Many, tired by threats and economic pressures, have given up and “few have remained adamant to continue to speak for those who don’t have a voice,” he says.
He has mixed feelings about reporting on the internet: the potential audience is bigger, but he has doubts about the quality of reporting online.
“Ironically, with social media you have more people speaking out through networks, but they’re not articulating information that can be of greater benefit to the public,” he says.
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But it could also be what he calls “the last frontier in the battle for freedom of expression.” He has set up the website Maka Angola to continue his reporting . “I cannot work for a newspaper in the country, I can’t get a job in the newsroom because of who I am, regardless of the skills I have.”
Angola is one of the world’s richest countries in natural resources, with large oil and diamonds deposits. But the effects of this wealth are not felt far beyond the ruling elite. Reports estimate that between 2007 and 2010 $32bn in oil revenue went unaccounted for in government ledgers.
It’s these resources and incredible wealth, Marques de Morais claims, that help Dos Santos evade international scrutiny and opposition, despite having ruled since 1979.
The constant battle has taken its toll on the journalist. “It’s diverted a great deal of my time which could have been applied to more investigations,” but he remains defiant, too: “it’s also made me stronger. In the same way I have committed to the case, and to fight, the generals have also had to commit to it.”
“Four years on, thanks to this court case the reports that I published about corruption and human rights abuses are still a much-talked about and important issue in Angola.” This is his victory.
The winners of this year’s Index on Censorship awards were announced on Wednesday evening at a ceremony in London