| Date: |
October 16, 2006, from 12:30 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. |
| Location: |
Columbia University
Morningside Campus
Hamilton Hall, Room 602 |
Contact: |
For further information regarding this event, please contact Trudi Baldwin by sending email to tb293@columbia.edu or by calling 212-854-0541. |
Meet Rafael Marques, Angolan human rights activist selected as winner of 2006 Civil Courage Prize, and hear how he has been using the media strategically to draw attention to the issue of government corruption and the exploitation of diamond and oil resources in Angola.Open to the public.
The 2006 Civil Courage Prize of $50,000 honors steadfast resistance to injustice at great personal risk.
Marques, 35, has spent his career promoting respect for human rights, peace, the democratization of Angola, and freedom of the press. Since the end of the country’s 27-year civil war 4 years ago, he has exposed the practices of Angola’s extractive industries, namely diamonds and oil, as well as unchecked plundering of the country’s resources. His newly released exposé, Diamonds of Humiliation and Misery, reports on the tragic impact that diamond extraction has on the lives of local populations and the abuses committed by the industry’s private security companies. He reveals the ownership of these companies by the top brass of the Angolan military and the police, including the general-commander of the National Police, Commissar José Alfredo “Ekuikui.” The oil and diamond sectors represent nearly 60% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) of $15.5 billion.
In 1999, Marques was imprisoned for 40 days without charges, ten of them incommunicado, for writing in a newspaper article that President Jose Eduardo dos Santos was responsible “for the destruction of the country” and “accountable for the promotion of incompetence, embezzlement and corruption.” His release took place in the wake of wide protests from humanitarian groups worldwide. A subsequent case, presented by the Open Society Justice Initiative and Interights to the U.N. Human Rights Committee, resulted in a ruling that Angola had violated the freedom of expression of a journalist, and a call for broad liberalization of the Angolan regime.
For further information about the Civil Courage Prize and this year’s winner, please visit: http://www.civilcourageprize.org.
This event is sponsored by the Strategic Communications Program, School of Continuing Education.
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