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Angola

Teenagers’ Detention At Angola Exposes Fractured Juvenile System

This week the state of Louisiana was expected to transfer a group of mostly Black boys out of the former death row unit of Louisiana State Penitentiary — a maximum-security adult prison also known as Angola. But a federal appeals court on Wednesday temporarily paused a judge’s order requiring the state to move the children out of Angola by Friday. The American Civil Liberties Union, the Southern Poverty Law Center and several law firms, pushed for a year to stop the state from detaining children at the prison, which is located on a former slave plantation. The legal advocates praised a federal judge’s mandate last week that Louisiana officials move the teens out of Angola and back to a juvenile-focused facility by September 15.

Do You Remember Cuba’s Dedication to Angola?

Fed up with foreign wars, Portuguese officers overthrew Prime Minister Marcello Caetano on April 25, 1974.  Many former colonies had the opportunity to define their own future. Angola had been the richest of Portuguese colonies, with major production in coffee, diamonds, iron ore and oil.  Of the former colonies, it had the largest white population, which numbered 320,000 of about 6.4 million.  When 90% of its white population fled in 1974, Angola lost most of its skilled labor. Three groups juggled for power.  The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), headed by Agostinho Neto was the only progressive alternative.

Gary Tyler Freed From Angola After 42 Years, Sentence Illegal

By Staff of The Associated Press - After almost 42 years at Louisiana's maximum security prison, Gary Tyler is a free man. Tyler had been jailed at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola since he was 16, convicted of first-degree murder for the 1974 slaying of a fellow Destrehan High School student amid rising racial tensions surrounding school integration. Now 57, he was released Friday. Norris Henderson, a counselor working with Tyler to help ease his re-entry into society, said Tyler's first reaction after walking out of Angola was relief.

Angola Jails 17 Activists After Public Reading Of Political Book

By Staff of The Guardian - A court in Angola has jailed 17 young activists, some for more than eight years, for rebelling against the government of José Eduardo dos Santos, after they organised a reading of a US academic’s book. The activists were arrested in the capital, Luanda, last June after organising the reading of From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation, by Gene Sharp. The book’s blurb describes it as “a blueprint for non-violent resistance to repressive regimes”.

Who Owns Angola’s Land? A Problem That Needs Quick Resolution

What would the people of Angola be without land? Teresa Quivienguele thinks for a moment, then says: “We’re nothing without land. Land is our mother, a tool to survive and evolve as people.” At the Angolan NGO Action for Rural Development and Environment’s (Adra) headquarters in central Luanda, where Quivienguele has her office, a map of the country covers the wall. There are many things to do, she says, and being in charge of Adra’s social projects means doing a lot of work. “The land issue is Angola’s biggest challenge,” she says. Land became state-owned after independence in 1975. But since the end of the civil war in 2002 – and with land reform in 2004 – things have started to change. Foreign companies now invest in infrastructure, minerals, diamonds, oil and land.
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