This report describes an alarming pattern of human rights violations by members of Angolan security forces against Congolese migrants. Women and girls, who are often detained with their children, have been victims of sexual abuse including gang rape, sexual exploitation, and being forced to witness sexual abuse of other women and girls. Beatings, degrading and inhumane treatment, arbitrary arrests, and denial of due process have been common practices during roundups of undocumented migrants, and in custody before their deportation.
Human Rights Watch interviewed more than 100 victims and witnesses to abuses, during expulsions from the Cabinda enclave and the diamond-rich Lunda Norte province to the Congolese provinces of Bas-Congo and Kasai-Occidental in 2009 and 2011. Most of those migrants enter Angola to work in alluvial diamond mines or in informal markets.