LUANDA (Reuters) - Nine Angolan policemen and 13 members of a millenarian Christian sect have been killed in clashes in the past week in the central Huambo province, police said, in violence local officials say is being stoked by the main opposition UNITA party.
Angolan police say 22 killed in clashes with religious sect - Yahoo News
Lessee, Angola, the MPLA & UNITA, always able to produce some strange affairs.
Continued after the incense smoke
OK, the deaths are allegedly the result of gunplay during raids by the cops in which they were trying to arrest the leader of "The Light of the World", a 3,000 member dissident sect of the Seventh-Day Adventists. He was eventually successfully busted.
Angola's government has branded the Light of the World an illegal organisation. No reason is given for that. The sect predicts the end of the world on December 31 and directs its members to live in seclusion. Why the MPLA government didn't just wait until the whole farce fell through on January One is also unexplained.
UNITA, naturally, denies involvement and claims that the police orchestrated the violence in order to suppress planned nationwide demonstrations against Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos' 36-year rule later this month.
According to the Reuters article cited as Yahoo News, the local (MPLA) government stated:
"The sect, taking advantage of the faith of (Kalupeteka's) followers, has put in motion a political plan well-orchestrated and directed, with many of the traits of UNITA,"
, presumably in justification for either the outlawry, the raids, blaming UNITA, or all of the above.
Some background here: Angolan Civil War
Oh yes, Angola is a major oil producer and exporter. Back in the day, Gulf Oil had a huge chunk of the action. At one point in time, Cubans were defending Gulf's Cabinda oilfields from the US supplied and backed revolutionaries who were trying to cut off the government's oil revenues, but that is another strange tale.