Radio VORGAN Reactivates
By Nick Grace
January 7, 1999
Radio VORGAN sliced the airwaves of Angola once again yesterday - the first time since it was silenced last April as mandated by the UN-brokered peace accords. And the station that was repeatedly condemned by the United Nations (UN) is back on short wave (SW).
Portuguese television reported early Thursday morning, according to Rui Pires (CT1FAK), that the grey clandestine station run by UNITA resumed its SW transmissions on January 6 - less than a week after a second United Nations cargo plane was shot down. This report is confirmed by the Portuguese news agency LUSA, which writes "UNITA relaunched shortwave broadcasts Wednesday from its VORGAN radio." Its frequency and schedule, however, are unknown. Whether or not the station is employing the 10 kW broadcast containers supplied by the United States during the Cold War is also undetermined.
Although details about VORGAN, an acronym for a Voz Resistencia do Galo Negro (Voice of the Resistence of the Black Cockerel), have always been sketchy since it began in 1979, UNITA representatives in Washington emphasized its importance for their group before it closed last year. SW, they said, allows their message to propagate over Angola's mountainous terrain. "The Government," they complain "has a monopoly on television and will soon have the only radio station, Radio Nacional de Angola, to reach the entire country when Radio VORGAN... is replaced by the limited range of FM Radio Despertar."
VORGAN was to become a licensed non-partisan FM radio station called Radio Despertar (Awakening). Although UNITA staff completed media training classes sponsored by the UN and the National Democratic Institute, continued warfare between UNITA and the government have kept the project in a virtual coma.
UNITA representatives could not be reached for comment on this report due to both the timing of its emergence and as a result of the group's isolation from the international community. CRW readers are invited to read an investigative report on the station written in 1998 on the Clandestine Radio Intel Web:
http://www.qsl.net/yb0rmi/vorgan.htm
|
