European parliamentarians voting during one of the sessions this week. JULIEN WARNAD (EFE)
Two decades later, the European Parliament has once again ruled on the "dictatorial regime" of Teodoro Obiang in Equatorial Guinea.
518 MEPs out of the 546 participants in this Thursday's plenary voted in favor of a resolution that regretted the "systematic and organized strategy of the Obiang dictatorial regime of political persecution and repression of political opponents both within the country and abroad." foreigner”, which includes arbitrary arrests, harassment, kidnappings, forced transfers, torture, murder and death sentences.
The European Parliament also demands the repatriation of Julio Obama, an opponent of the dictatorship with Spanish nationality who died in prison last January,
Julio Obama, Feliciano Efa, Martín Obiang and Bienvenido Ndong disappeared in South Sudan in 2019. According to the complaint filed with the Spanish Police by their relatives ―Obama and Efa have Spanish nationality and the other two are residents of Madrid―, the four opponents to the Obiang dictatorship, they were tricked into going to Juba (South Sudan), where they were kidnapped and transferred to Equatorial Guinea.
In that country they were tortured, tried without guarantees and sentenced to long prison terms.
One of them, Julio Obama, 61, died in January.
All this has led the National Court to open an investigation, as reported by EL PAÍS, in which a son of the dictator, Carmelo Ovono Obiang, is implicated;
the Minister of State, Nicolás Obama;
and the general director of Presidential Security, Isaac Mgmea.
The case has reached the European Parliament, which has approved an emergency resolution in which several Spanish parliamentarians have taken the lead.
One of them has been the representative of Ciudadanos, Jordi Cañas, editor and negotiator of the finally approved text, who in his speech denounced that the regime "violates human rights since 1979" and, consequently, showed his surprise that they had to go through 20 years for the European Parliament to speak again.
Domènec Ruiz Devesa, the Socialist MEP who spoke in the debate held after 10 pm on Wednesday, began his speech by stressing that Obama was a "European citizen", since he had dual Guinean and Spanish nationality.
“No one deserves to die for his ideas.
We ask that this harassment and arbitrary detentions both inside and outside the country cease,” he continued.
One of the harshest interventions was that of Miguel Urban, from Anticapitalistas.
The MEP spoke of "a systematic plan" of repression.
He also points out that until now there has not been a tougher fight against the dictatorship due to the interests of Spanish companies in the country.
Urban also asked to "seize the assets of the family [of the dictator] in Europe, starting with Spain."
Another of the Spaniards who was very harsh was the Vox parliamentarian Herman Tertsch, who began his speech by talking about the "oldest dictator in the world."
Tertsch also demanded to know what had happened so that the Spanish judge investigating the case, Santiago Pedraz, "revoke the summary secrecy" allowing those investigated to flee.
He was referring to the resignation of the magistrate to arrest the son of the dictator on December 29, when Carmelo Ovono Obiang was in Madrid and, instead, he demanded that the police inform the Guinean leader that he was being investigated and should appoint a lawyer and a solicitor in the open case.
Hours later, the dictator's son fled.
Gabriel Mato intervened in the Parliament for the PP, who asked "the European Union and the Member States must consider once and for all that in international relations interests should not prevail, but values".
The approved resolution calls for the release of political prisoners in the former Spanish colony —that the Portuguese Social Democratic deputy Isabel Santos, more than 500— and "respect for international legislation on human rights, humane detention conditions, fair trials and access to families and lawyers for detainees.”
“The EU and its member states must, for their part, suspend all types of military, police and security cooperation with Equatorial Guinea, and sanction members of the regime who have perpetrated human rights violations,” she continues.
