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In Equatorial Guinea, hundreds of people end up behind bars for years without being able to receive visits from relatives or legal professionals.
These forgotten people, in most cases imprisoned after trials plagued by irregularities, are in infamous prisons in the world, such as Black Beach, Bata or Bioko.
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Since they have entered the prison walls, they have not been returned or heard from, and their relatives do not know if they are alive or dead.
A few years ago, a released prisoner described the Black Beach prison, located in the capital, Malabo, as a hole in which, due to the proximity of the sea, the humidity caused the prisoners to live in subhuman conditions.
Torture is a widespread practice in the country's prisons and overcrowding poses a constant threat to the lives of detainees.
Amnesty International has documented several cases of missing prisoners, such as those of Francisco Micha, an Equatorial Guinean citizen living in Spain since the late 1990s, and his friend Fulgencio Obiang Esono, an engineer, of Italian nationality and originally from Equatorial Guinea.
Francisco and Fulgencio were going together from Rome to Togo on a business trip.
Upon arriving in Lomé on September 18, 2018, they were suddenly no longer reachable.
It began to be rumored that they had been abducted by Equatorial Guinean security forces and were being held in Black Beach prison.
A few days later, official sources confirmed these rumors.
Francisco and Fulgencio were going together from Rome to Togo on a business trip.
Upon arriving in Lomé on September 18, 2018, they were suddenly no longer reachable
Fulgencio and Francisco were tried along with more than a hundred men accused of having participated in an alleged conspiracy to overthrow President Teodoro Obiang in 2017. The trial took place in the city of Bata between March and May 2019.
According to those who attended as observers, the process was clouded by a whole catalog of violations of the right to a fair trial.
Most of the accused had been arbitrarily detained for about a year without being informed of the charges against them.
In the end, the 112 defendants - some of them tried in absentia - were sentenced to prison terms ranging from three to 90 years.
Fulgencio and Francisco were sentenced to almost 60 each.
Since the ruling was known, their families have lived in a nightmare.
They move on, but without understanding how a business trip to Togo could have ended up in an Equatorial Guinea prison.
In Madrid, where Francisco's family lives, they only know that he traveled to Rome to meet with Fulgencio and that from there they both traveled to Togo.
Francisco's wife, who has to take medication to sleep, feels that she urgently needs to know if he is still alive, because she cannot bear the suffering of her sons and daughter.
The last time he saw Francisco was on television in 2019, when his sentence was read.
Since then, it is as if the earth has swallowed him up.
She has not heard from him for more than two years and wants to believe that he is still alive and well.
For Francisco's four sons and daughter, the situation is so painful that they have not been able to share it even with their closest friends.
They consider their father a good man with good values.
The house seems empty to them since it's gone.
They miss when I came home from work every day and asked them one by one how their day had been.
They miss the secrets they shared with him, how he helped them and the Real Madrid games they watched together on television.
But despite everything, they still have hope.
They dream of the day when their father comes home.
They can't wait to tell you how well they are doing in school and how much they have improved playing soccer.
They want Francisco to be proud.
In Italy, Fulgencio's sister sometimes feels guilty for thinking that her brother is dead.
His words show endless suffering that he would like to put an end to:
“If you knew that Fulgencio is dead, with all the pain in the world, one gets used to the idea and resigns, but not knowing if he is alive or dead is an eternal agony. The Equatorial Guinean authorities are not only killing Fulgencio, the family has no life. What I would ask the president of Equatorial Guinea is to tell us if my brother is still alive or has killed him. (...) I think the authorities are doing this thinking that over time we are going to forget about Fulgencio, but we are not going to forget him ”.
Francisco and Fulgencio's families are not the only ones living this nightmare.
In November 2019, four members of the opposition group Movement for the Liberation of Equatorial Guinea Third Republic (MLGE3R) were abducted in South Sudan by Equatorial Guinean security forces and transferred to a prison in the country.
A few days later, official sources confirmed the rumors: they had been tried in absentia in the same trial in May 2019.
Most of the detainees were the breadwinners of their families, who are now struggling to survive by selling their belongings.
In some cases they have not had the courage to tell their sons and daughters the truth.
They have simply been told that their parents are in Equatorial Guinea for work reasons, because knowing the truth will kill them with sadness.
Torture is a widespread practice in the country's prisons and overcrowding poses a constant threat to the lives of detainees
One of the mothers asked herself this question: “How does my eight-year-old daughter, who adores her father and thinks he is a good person, understand that her father has been sent to jail for 80 years?
How can you understand that you will not see him again?
He's only 8 years old!
I can't do this to you.
It breaks my heart thinking that my daughter will never see her father again. "
In Equatorial Guinea, many prisoners will continue to be missing, living "in a deep black hole," as a former detainee said, alone and abandoned, without their relatives knowing what their fate has been.
However, their families have not lost faith. They continue to believe in the strength of their loved ones and that they may one day be released. Under national and international law, everyone accused of a crime has the right to a fair trial. However, in many countries around the world, such as Equatorial Guinea, the basic rights to defense and due process are not respected: legal professionals present during interrogations, independent medical personnel available to examine people detainees and contact with families, and ensuring that a “confession” obtained through torture can never be used as evidence.
Amnesty International urges the President of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang, to urgently comply with international human rights law and ensure that all detainees are protected from torture and other ill-treatment, are held in humane conditions and have access to their families and to legal professionals.
Marta Colomer is Amnesty International's campaign manager for West and Central Africa.
This article has been published in English on the
Daily Mavericks.
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