The island of Ano Bom, where there is a Creole with a Portuguese lexical base, was precisely one of the arguments used in favour of the country joining the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) ten years ago at the summit of the Lusophone organisation in Dili on 23 July 2014.
This Tuesday, the country and the organisation will mark that accession with a visit to Malabo by the acting president of the CPLP, the head of state of Sao Tome and Principe, Carlos Vilanova, who will be received by his local counterpart, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.
The researcher from the Centre for International Studies at Iscte – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa told Lusa that, ‘at the moment, the country’s prisons [Equatorial Guinea] are holding several prisoners from the island of Ano Bom, Anobonese who live on the island, as well as on the mainland of the country, and also from the island of Bioco, because of protests against environmental destruction processes on the islands,’ related to the ‘construction of private housing and other developments’.
According to Ana Lúcia Sá, anyone who expresses any criticism or opposition to the projects underway on the islands ‘is being arrested, without charge, and prevented from receiving visits and medical care’.
‘In other words,’ she said, “the situation is more of the same,” and ’in this case, it’s a sector group of citizens on the island of Ano Bom who are suffering this abuse from the regime.
Those actions on the islands ‘destroy the local fauna and flora’, emphasises Sá.
‘They are destroying the island of Ano Bom, which historically has suffered a lot, from toxic waste from the West to this situation of non-protection of the natural environment,’ she added.
In addition to human rights – where ‘basically everything is the same’ – Ana Lúcia Sá also doesn’t see any significant progress in Equatorial Guinea in relation to some of the commitments made when it joined the CPLP ten years ago, particularly in terms of teaching the Portuguese language, or even in terms of reforming the legal system.
‘I don’t know if Portuguese is actually taught. What I do know is that it’s a country with deficient structures in education, even in the first official language, which is Spanish,’ he said.
Regarding the reform of the legal system, namely the abolition of the death penalty, which the country removed from its Penal Code on 17 August 2022 – the derogation of which, however, is still the subject of internal discussion about its legal compliance – Ana Lúcia Sá says that the whole issue continues to be used to support or help a group of people who are treated unfairly in society, also known as being ‘tokenising’.
‘It keeps being said: ‘oh yes, there’s no more death penalty’; but there doesn’t need to be a death penalty, because there are other mechanisms to prevent people from having a free life, as we’re seeing now,’ she said.
‘I don’t believe that joining the CPLP has served to improve any situation in Equatorial Guinea, or even – as was the intention – to make the CPLP an institution that promotes human rights in a state governed by the rule of law, of greater communion, of greater concern for the citizens of Equatorial Guinea,’ she concluded.
Even so, Ana Lúcia Sá sees a ‘positive evolution in these ten years’: ‘I believe that there is a greater involvement and greater knowledge of civil society in the various countries that make up the CPLP in relation to various situations within those same countries, including Equatorial Guinea,’ she said.
However, ‘economic motivation’ continues to guide relations between Equatorial Guinea and the other members of the CPLP, within the framework of a ‘profoundly unequal, asymmetrical and racist’ international system, the researcher emphasised.
‘The entire construction of the international system was based on this exploitation, on this asymmetry,’ she said. In this context, ‘the lives of the Equato-Guineans don’t matter, because if they did, even within the framework of the CPLP – and without talking about interference, because that’s not what this is about – there would be ways to mitigate various situations, there would be more dialogue, there would be more possibilities for positive interactions and more improvements’.
‘The fact is that there isn’t,’ concluded Ana Lúcia Sá. ‘And Equatorial Guinea is one case; there are other cases in the CPLP itself, but there is a complete disregard [for human rights]. It’s as if these were lives that didn’t matter,’ she said.
