"Look at those skulls. Just look at what UNITA are doing to us." Rocha, a 23-year-old Angolan, was commenting on a photograph in a back issue of Jornal De Angola. A row of skulls, each with teeth bared, filled almost half of page two of the state-owned daily. Above the gruesome black-and-white picture was printed: "Genocide in Chipeta".
Chipeta is a tiny village less than 25km east of the highland city of Kuito. On July 19th, news reached Luanda that several mass graves had been discovered there. The authorities were quoted as saying that more than 90 bodies, each tied with rope, had been found in four wells.
Immediately, the government blamed UNITA for the massacre. But the rebels denied the accusation and called for an independent investigation.
Two weeks later a small team of investigators from the United Nations Human Rights Division (HRD) in Luanda visited Chipeta and spent three days searching for evidence of a massacre. Shortly after that I contacted the head of the HRD, Mr Nicholas Howen. However, New York had apparently given instructions not to reveal any information.
It took nearly a month to persuade the UN to tell the public the results of its findings. On September 1st a spokeswoman for the Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, finally admitted that, "based on what they saw and conversations with locals, they did not find any evidence of bodies as proof of a massacre".
However, many onlookers wondered why it took the UN so long to tell the truth. Mr Alex Vines, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, says the reason is simple. "They [the UN] are negotiating a future mission in Angola and don't want to upset the Angolan authorities." Indeed, the UN is to open a new office in Luanda towards the end of September, nearly eight months after the observer mission, MONUA, closed.
But that may not be the only reason. The day after the "Chipeta massacre" was reported, Mr Annan issued a statement in which he said he was "deeply distressed by press reports concerning the discovery of two mass graves in Chipeta . . . "
One source within the UN believes the Chipeta matter not only comes at a "sensitive time", it also highlights the secretary-general's "mistake" of commenting publicly on an issue which turned out to be no more than government propaganda. For this reason, the UN hoped to keep its investigations, which contradicted the Angolan government reports, quiet.
In Mr Vines's opinion, "the Chipeta episode is not auspicious for the new UN mission in Angola. One of the problems has been the UN failure to denounce human rights violations or expose when they have been fabricated or exaggerated."
Mr Vines is not the only critic. One Western diplomat said: "Chipeta smacks of previous UN failures in Angola. They prefer to turn a blind eye, put their head in the sand and keep quiet, rather than upset the authorities." The diplomat argues that UN silence was one of the reasons Angola's Lusaka peace process collapsed last December.
Apparently, hundreds of UN observers knew that UNITA rebels were stockpiling weapons when they were supposed to be disarming. Nevertheless, the UN decided against making this information public.
Ironically, just as the country's civil society is making courageous demands for peace, the UN is standing timid.
As Mr Vines puts it: "The prime lesson from past UN missions in Angola is that the policy of `see no evil, speak no evil' doesn't work. Angolans are increasingly vocal about their rights; the UN needs to support them, not remain a silent witness."