Human rights in Angola inefficiency; infringements on citizens' privacy rights and forced evictions without compensation; restrictions on nongovernmental organizations; discrimination and violence against women; abuse of children; trafficking in persons; discrimination against persons with disabilities, indigenous people, and persons with HIV/AIDS; limits on workers' rights; and forced labor." A longtime Portuguese colony, Angola waged a war of independence that lasted from 1961 to 1975. Angola received its independence from Portugal in 1975, whereupon it immediately plunged into a brutal, bloody, and destructive civil war between the governing Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which was supported principally by the Soviet Union and
Angola–Soviet Union relations United States, the People's Republic of China and the Mobutu government in Zaïre. The United States, South Africa, and several other African nations also supported Jonas Savimbi's National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), whose ethnic and regional base lies in the Ovimbundu heartland of central Angola. The government of the Soviet Union, well aware of South African activity in southern Angola, flew Cuban soldiers into Luanda one week before November 11, 1975, the date on which Angolan nationalists had agreed to declare independence. While Cuban officers led the mission and provided the bulk of the troop force,