After Being Expelled, Illegal Immigrants in Angola Experience Human Rights Abuses: UN

Recent migrant worker expulsions from Angola have led to human rights violations, including rape and other types of violence against Congolese women and children, according to officials and the UN.

In the previous six months, 12,000 workers were reported to have passed through one border crossing close to the town of Kamako in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Only 20% of the deported workers had permits, according to the UN report, and many of them enter Angola illegally.

Angola’s efforts to encourage legal migration through an online visa application process included a crackdown on illegal workers.

330,000 workers were expulsed as a result of previous mass deportations, the largest of which took place in 2018. The UN estimated in 2010 that more than 650 people had experienced sexual assault while being driven from Angola.

Reports indicate that girls and women are frequently subjected to inhumane and degrading treatment upon expulsion, and some of them face sexual abuse by unidentified perpetrators, despite the fact that the precise number of people impacted by the most recent expulsion is unknown.

Local clinics have reported 122 cases of rape this year, an all-time high for the town, according to a local doctor who treats sexual assault victims. He calculated that the security forces in Angola were responsible for at least 14 rapes, while civilians in the Congo were responsible for many more.

The anonymous Congolese immigration official confirmed that numerous rapes had been discussed by officials on both sides of the border. Dieudonné Pieme Tutokot, the governor of the southern Congo’s Kasai region, declared that he was aware of cases of rape and that he had started an investigation.

The testimonies of the victims suggest otherwise, despite Milagres’ denials that rapes and other forms of abuse had taken place. Nevertheless, the immigration officer from the Democratic Republic of the Congo was upset with the circumstance and said, “We are witnessing this without being able to do anything due to a lack of resources.”