Namibia: Activist unfazed by assassination allegations
Namibia’s National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) condemns, in the strongest possible terms, the alleged scheming to assassinate a number of ruling party critics. Those targeted for physical elimination include NSHR executive director Phil ya Nangoloh and Max Hamata, one the country’s top investigative reporters.
Namibia’s National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) condemns, in the strongest possible terms, the alleged scheming to assassinate a number of ruling party critics. Those targeted for physical elimination include NSHR executive director Phil ya Nangoloh and Max Hamata, one the country’s top investigative reporters. In its lead story entitled, Max Hamata Tops Hit List[1], the weekly tabloid, Informanté, of which Hamata is Editor-in-Chief, this morning, reported that “a clique” with the country’s civilian intelligence outfit, Namibian Central Intelligence Service (NCIS), has been plotting to eliminate Hamata, ya Nangoloh and several other perceived Government critics.
“I am not at all surprised by the Informanté revelations, as I have myself for two weeks repeatedly been receiving warnings from sympathetic NCIS and Military Intelligence operatives as well as other concerned persons. They told me be ‘extremely careful’ as several top leaders in the so-called Omusati clique have allegedly drawn up a hit list consisting of Hamata, myself and certain people in RDP to be eliminated. At least two such sources have named former Namibian President Dr. Sam Nujoma as the spider at the center of the web of such plotting. Specifically, the names of ‘Shilunga’, ‘Ndoze’ and ‘Pena’ have often also been cited as the implementers of this heinous scheming. During the last eight years, people such as Malenga (2001), Shevanyenga (2003) and Ipangelwa (2005) have been assassinated presumably also by NCIS agents. Though I take these allegations very seriously, I will not be intimidated a bit by this latest cowardly scheming either”, said a defiant ya Nangoloh this morning.
In recent years, months, weeks and days, the names, among others, Hamata, ya Nangoloh, Jesaya Nyamu, Hidipo Hamutenya and jorunalists Gwen Lister and John Grobler as well as Nordic-based Namibian academic Henning Melber had been frequently vilified as “imperialist agents” and had ad nauseam featured prominently in hateful articles and editorials published in the ruling Swapo Party’s mouthpiece, Namibia Today, as well as in various articles on the websites of the Swapo Party, www.swapoparty.org andwww.spyl.org.