Geography and Population:

The Republic of Equatorial Guinea is located near the equator mid-way along Africa’s west Coast. It has two provinces: Rio Muni, the continental territory, whose capital is Bata, and Fernando Póo, the island territory whose capital is Santa Isabel, which is also the capital of the Republic. Several smaller islands widespread in the Gulf of Guinea are also part of the country which has a total land area of about 11,000 square miles, about the same size as Belgium, or the U.S. state of Maryland.

Overall, the region has tropical climate, with abundant rainfall and high humidity. It is richly endowed with beautiful beaches, fertile land and many minerals including offshore oil deposits. Eighty per cent of its small population of 500,000 lives in Rio Muni and most of the rest on the island of Fernando Póo. The inhabitants come from a wide variety of origins in Africa as well as some intermarriage with Spaniards. The majority are Bantus and semi-Bantus. The Fangs of Rio Muni are the most populous group, followed by the Bubis of Fernando Póo. Another minority group is formed by the Ndowes, Kreeos (creoles) and the Annoboneses.

With its abundance of resources and small population, Equatorial Guinea once seemed destined to become the paradise of sub-Saharan Africa after independence was attained in 1968. That promise has not been fulfilled.

1. Agriculture and Fishing:

Equatorial Guinea is the origin of the best cacao in the world, which now is largely produced by other countries, following the neglect of the agriculture industry by the country’s rulers. The country is known for its fine woods, including okoume (aucumea klaineana) and ebony (diospiros crasiflora). Exports include timber, cacao, coffee, coconuts, cassava, palm oil, beans and bananas.

With respect to fishing industry, for tuna fishing the sea current of Equatorial Guinea is the world’s best.

2. Natural Resources:

Equatorial Guinea possesses various minerals, including iron ore, copper, diamond, gold, columbite-tantalite, manganese, zircon, corundum, ilmenite, uranium, barium and tin. Among its natural resources, oil appears to be the most important disposable asset in the country at the present moment, transforming the small Spanish-speaking nation in Central Africa into another oil baron in the Gulf of Guinea, now presumed to contain one of the most promising deposits of hydrocarbons on this planet.

Equatorial Guinea’s inland and offshore oil reserves are enormous and have attracted several oil companies worldwide, which are now exploring and exploiting the hydrocarbon susbstance in Fernando Póo and in continental Rio Muni. Among the companies operating in the country are Exxon-Mobil, Samedan Oil Corporation, Globex International, Axem Resources, Triton Energy Limited, Ocean Energy, Elf Aquitaine, Braspetro of Petróleo Brasileiro, SK Corporation of Korea, Vanco Energy Company, CMS Nomeco and Atlantic Methanol Production Company.

The present production of crude oil in Equatorial Guinea is more than 350,000 barrels daily, with a tendency to increase this volume much higher as days go by. These figures, according to the opinion of western experts in petrochemistry, conclude that in the near future the small Spanish-speaking nation in Central Africa will surpass the crude production of its neighbor Cameroon, to the north, and Congo, and will get closer to the production of its other neighbor to the south, Gabon, whose production is decreasing. The estimate of crude production in Equatorial Guinea led J. Robinson West, president of the managing board of Petroleum Finance Company in the United States, to conclude that in the coming years the two most promising oil countries in West Africa will be Equatorial Guinea and Congo-Brazzaville.

1. Government:

Equatorial Guinea is ruled by Teodoro Obiang Nguema, who, in 1979 as vice-minister of defense, overthrew his uncle Francisco Macías Nguema, the pitiless dictator and first president who ruled after independence in 1968.

In 1982, a new constitution was written and Obiang Nguema officially declared a civil government which, however, existed in name only, since most of the cabinet was composed of members of the previous Consejo Militar Supremo (Supreme Military Council).

In 1986, due to the international pressure from donor countries of the European Economic Community and from the United Nations to democratize Equatorial Guinea, President Nguema founded the sole legal political party in the country, the so-called Partido Democrático de la Guinea Ecuatorial (the Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea) or PDGE. In 1989, president Obiang Nguema held the first presidential election since 1968; as the only candidate he was elected for a period of seven years.

In the referendum in November 1991, President Nguema submitted to the electorate another constitution similar to the 1982 constitution. The constitution, unfamiliar to the Guinean people, was approved by 98.38% of the voters, according to Nguema’s dictatorial government. While the new constitution, which was made law in December of the same year, stipulated a multiparty system, it was really a set-back for individual freedoms. In addition, it allowed the presidential powers to take root and gave president Obiang Nguema immunity for life against all legal process.

In 1993 and 1995, due to continuing international pressure to accelerate the process for the democratization of Guinea, President Nguema allowed and even himself formed small groups of pseudo-opponents. These were composed of youths originating from Spain and friends who concurred with the dictatorial regime, chosen, manipulated and financed, the majority of them, by Nguema himself, and who had neither a base nor political image or electorate in the country, and who follow literally the president’s Fundamental Law, which not only is antidemocratic but bars all true processes of a real democratization of Equatorial Guinea.

In February 1996, president Nguema organized presidential elections prematurely, with himself the sole candidate, in violation of his own Fundamental Law, and won 99.99% of those who voted, according to the government. In actuality, the voter turnout was small as a protest to the situation.

President Nguema, as the military officer with the highest rank in the country with the self-appointed military rank of Brigadier General, controls the two branches of government, the military and civilian. The Esangui clan of the president and his related Fangs of Mongomo (Rio Muni) region retain almost all of the seventy highest positions of the government.

These branches of the civilian and military security are responsible for the public order, yet they historically have committed the majority of human rights abuses against the innocent Guinean population, often at the requests of high ranking officials of the government, who commonly are present during the sessions of interrogations and tortures.

The whole spectrum of human rights continues to be strictly restrained. Against any opposition, the government responds with arrests, imprisonment and tortures of opponents in spite of the promises of the government to establish political reform. President Obiang Nguema continues to play politically with the pseudo-opposition existing inside the country, which is legalized and financed by him, and which does not represent a real challenge to his regime. Until now, the security forces have not stopped harassing the population and serious political dissidents, arresting, imprisoning, torturing and sometimes killing opponents in all parts of the country.

The State Council, members of which are named by the president himself and who answer to him, can only deal with constitutional matters if these are at the whim of the president. There is no separation between the executive and judiciary sectors, and the High Court serves to the liking of President Obiang Nguema.

Even though the law requires equal treatment to all the citizens, it does not guarantee the same rights and privileges to the ethnic minority groups. The Fangs are 80% of the population, the Bubis 10% and the other groups represent the rest. A large number of Fang clans, especially those of president Obiang Nguema, and family members by marriage, control all the aspects of government, the military and that of social life. The discrimination against the Bubis, Fernandinos or Kreeos (creole) and Annoboneses of the islands of Fernando Póo and Annobon, as well as against the Ndowes and Playeros (inhabitants of Southern Rio Muni, its coastline and islands), is widespread, as much in the guaranty of political positions as in awarding scholarships to study abroad.

The workers have no rights to free association. The salaries are established by the government and the employer, with little or no say by the employee. The employer must abide by the low salary limits established by the dictatorial government. But in many instances the foreign companies secretely pay more to their Guinean employees because the salaries established by the State are not enough for the subsistence of the employee and his or her family. Strikes are banned by law.

In spite of the Guinea oil "El Dorado" nothing has been done to improve the standard of living of the citizens. The Guinean people continue to live as before under miserable conditions, with no decent roads, hospitals, schools and clean water in the country, and a lack of jobs and equal opportunities. The beneficiaries of the oil boom are the president, his family and political friends. The president and his family governmental elite see the state as a patrimonial family estate, as Howard W. French, the New York Times correspondent, in his news chronicle of February 15, 1998 from the Guinean capital, titled "Oil Profits Trickle Up or Out of Africa’s Forgotten Land", wrote:

"...a patrimonial state with a complete absence of the rule of law. The president’s clan controls everything and there is total confusion between state resources and personal wealth..."

The United States’ Central Intelligence Agency added:

"..Businesses, for the most part, are owned by government officials and their family members...": {Equatorial Guinea [Country Listing][Factbook Home Page]. Http://www.odci/cia/publication/factbook/ek.html"}.

The oil boom in Equatorial Guinea, in addition to enriching the president and his family, has provided a distraction from the offenses committed against the Guineans during his dictatorial regime and against the United States and Western Europe by his shipping of drugs to these countries. The current president benefits from the oil companies operating in his narco-State, as they provide a cover for his massive human rights violations, narcotrafficking and money laundering, in addition to condoning the continuous political situation of the Guinean nation, whose population suffers tyranny, dictatorship, underdevelopment, backwardness, disease, abuse, hunger and misery.

2. Illegal drugs:

President Obiang Nguema, immediately after overthrowing his uncle in a palace coup in 1979, dedicated himself to drug trafficking and money laundering, transforming Equatorial Guinea into a center of international drug distribution. Most of the drugs come from south-west Asia and are shipped to the United States of America and Western Europe. The illicit narcotraffic business of the Guinean president came to light in 1980 uncovered by the American Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the International Narcotics Board, the French Dépêche Internationale des Drogues (International Dispatch of Drugs) and the Observatoire Géopolitique des Drogues de Paris (Paris Geopolitical Observation Post of Drugs), and from the arrests of the president's family and members of his government, who are active operatives in the narcotraffic business of the Equatoguinean capo. Santos Pascual Bikomo Nangwande, Obiang Nguema's minister of information, was arrested at Madrid's Barajas International Airport, on July 6, 1997 with a suitcase full of heroin obtained in Karachi (Pakistan) for the Guinean president. From his jail cell at Madrid's Soto del Real prison, he declared to the Spanish weekly magazine Interviú, on September 29, 1997 that "Obiang Nguema is Africa's major drug trafficker". Earlier in February, 1997 the International Narcotics Board, in its official report, placed Obiang Nguema's Guinea among the nine African narco-states. The Dépêche Internationale des Drogues, published by the Observatoire Géopoltique des Drogues de Paris, in its publication of August of the same year wrote:

"...Since 1988, more than ten diplomats or members of the presidential family have been detained for drug trafficking in various countries...".

Pro-human rights non-governmental organizations (NGO) wrote in December, 1995 from Geneva, Switzerland:

"Obiang has transformed his diplomatic personnel and his family, who are frequently the same, into an international network of drugs for this country of 28,000 km² and 400,000 inhabitants".

The American DEA rated president Obiang Nguema as one of the main "black money launderers" of this time. The key man for the Guinean President's money laundering operations is Victor Guy Llanse (also known as Victor Llansol Suy), a French national, fugitive from the French justice system. He is the treasurer of the Société Financière pour la Communauté Économique Européenne (Financial Company for the European Economic Community), a bogus outfit which specialized in money laundering for the Colombian Medellin drug cartel, according to revelations by the Spanish intelligence, Interpol and the American DEA. Mr. Guy Llanse currently serves as President Obiang Nguema's "special adviser for financial affairs", with diplomatic immunity and a diplomatic passport #943/92, and occupies an office in the presidential palace, which has a full array of the most sophisticated, state-of-the-art telecommunications equipment operated by technicians supplied by the Latin-American drug cartel.

3. Political opposition:

The most serious political opposition in the country is the Movimiento Nacional de Liberación de Guinea Ecuatorial (MONALIGE), a clandestine party, the main political party for the country’s independence. MONALIGE’s historical background dates back to 1959, the year of its foundation in Guinea, to liberate the country from Spanish colonialism. After nine years of political struggle and diplomatic negotiations by this party to obtain freedom for the Guinean people at the UN (United Nations), OAU (Organization of African Unity) and other international organizations in existence at the time, independence was achieved on October 12, 1968; but due to the political maneuvers by the Spanish government during the decolonization process of Spanish Guinea (now Equatorial Guinea), the political power was given to Francisco Messie (alias Macías) Nguema and his nephew Teodoro Obiang Nguema, thus excluding from it all the nationalists and freedom fighters who fought and gave their lives for the noble Guinean liberation cause. For four years Macías had been the Vice-president of the unpopular puppet autonomous government preceding independence and Teodoro was an ex-recruit of the Spanish Military Academy of Zaragoza (Spain).

Both Macías and his nephew, the current president, are responsible for the national terror, arbitrary arrests, killings, executions, lynchings, cannibalistic practices and political assassinations of more than 50,000 Guineans during Macías’ time and continuing to the present. They are responsible for personal abuse, injustice, corruption, forbidding Guineans from religious worship and the desecration of churches and the Holy Sacraments, imprisonment, beating and killing of priests and religious personnel, raping of nuns, teenage girls and married women, during the past thirty-two years of dictatorial family regime. They are responsible for the present status quo: corruption, immorality and the catastrophic economic chaos of the country. The regime, in addition to the killing and massacre of innocent Guineans, has caused one third of the population to flee into involuntary exile in neighboring countries (Cameroon, Gabon and Nigeria) and elsewhere abroad, particularly in Spain.

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