LUANDA (AFP) -- More than 20 members of a group claiming autonomy for eastern Angola are due to on trial this week charged with crimes against state security, their lawyer told AFP.

The majority were arrested in Lunda Norte province in April and have been held in custody since then, while the group's president Jota Filipe Malakito was arrested separately in Luanda in May.
Luanda-based lawyer Alberto Waca told AFP: “We have been told the court case will start on November 12 in Dundo in Lunda Norte and I am travelling there tomorrow to represent them.”
In court papers seen by AFP, the government alleges the group has been distributing leaflets which are “destabilizing to institutional order” and that the pamphlets refer to six military fronts in the east of the country.
Members of the group who remain at liberty deny having any military forces and claim their colleagues have been wrongfully imprisoned.
The group calls itself the Manifesto Commission of Legal Sociological Protectorate of Lunda Tchokwe and wants the provinces -- Moxico, Kuando Kubango, and the diamond-rich Lunda Norte and Lunda Sul -- to have a devolved administration.
It claims that the region, home to the Tchokwe people, was never colonized by the Portuguese and is not officially part of Angola.
Citing documents from The Conference of Berlin in the 1880s, when Africa was divided up along colonial lines, the group made a formal application for autonomy to the Angolan government in 2007 to request autonomy, followed by public and media declarations in 2008.
An Amnesty International spokeswoman in London confirmed they had been notified of the case but said she was unable to make any comment.