20120317
AFP
An Angolan weekly whose computers were seized by police after it lampooned President Jose Eduardo dos Santos will appear this weekend and carry on fighting for democracy, its chief said Friday.

"The current government in Angola wants to muzzle our weekly by seizing our equipment," Fernando Puati, the managing director of Folha 8, told AFP in a telephone interview.

"But we are determined to press on with our fight to consolidate democracy in our country through our publications," he said. "Despite the seizure of equipment by local authorities, Folha 8 will hit the stands this weekend."

About 15 officers from the National Directorate of Criminal Investigations raided the offices on Monday and hauled off 20 computers and a photo scanner, effectively shutting down one of the country's two independent newspapers.

The paper had reprinted a photo montage making the rounds on the Internet, showing dos Santos, Vice President Fernando Piedade Dias dos Santos, and General Manuel Helder Vieira Dias Junior Kopelipa depicted as thieves in a police line-up.

The raid came two days after police violently broke up a protest by youths in the capital Luanda and the southern city of Benguela. They were calling for dos Santos to step down and denouncing the appointment of a ruling party member as the head of the national electoral commission.

Angola is due to hold elections later this year, only the third since gaining independence from Portugal in 1975.