2023-08-22 21:46:52
The writer and activist Tryphony Melibea Obono she was detained by the Equatorial Guinean police on Saturday, August 19 at four in the afternoon in Malabo, but no one noticed. They admitted her to the headquarters of the Ministry of Security, a place with so few guarantees that everyone there calls her Guantanamo.
Obiang’s son refuses to testify in the case for alleged torture in the National Court
Further
Obono visits Spain frequently, as she is a researcher on the team at the Center for Afro-Hispanic Studies of the National Distance Education University. In addition, she completed her university education in Spain: after completing a double degree in Political Science and Journalism, she completed a master’s degree in International Cooperation and Development at the University of Murcia. Beyond her dedication to her writing, she is also a noted feminist activist and queer. In an interview with elDiario.es last April, he recognized the problems he suffered both internationally “by not reproducing the stereotypes expected of a black person” and in Equatorial Guinea: “There you cannot talk about LGTBIQ+ theme because they consider that this is something ‘for whites’. And feminism too. It is structural,” he stated.
The police withdrew his cell phone and did not allow him to notify anyone of his arrest, not even his lawyer. It wasn’t until Sunday afternoon, his friends and his sister worried about not answering the messages, that they knew something bad had happened. Finally, the writer managed to communicate with the outside but it was only thanks to the fact that she needed medication. Thus, she was allowed to call her little sister to take her away. At that time, she spread the alarm.
No one could go see her, she did not have authorization for visits. Nor did the Government report why she had been arrested. Gonzalo Abaha, a member of the NGO We Are Part of the World, of which Trifonia Melibea Obono is a part, dedicated himself to calling organizations and embassies in search of help. It was he who phoned his lawyer.
“It is very common in Guinea to have arrests in a neighborhood or on a highway without a specific explanation as to why it happens. You do not have the right to request a lawyer or communicate with your family,” explains Abaha in a telephone communication with elDiario.es from Malabo. “They stay there incommunicado until the superior boss decides that they let you. In Guantánamo, people are tortured and women are raped. This is Guinea, a country of outrages”.
Abaha’s rapid movement had an effect, and Spanish organizations such as the Pedro Zerolo Foundation or Acción Triángulo warned of the arrest. Late on Sunday, Obono was released. Her militant partner assures that the embassies of Spain and the United States were “involved” and that it was thanks to international pressure that she was released: “If it weren’t for that, she would remain incommunicado, who knows where she would be” .
This newspaper has tried to contact Melibea Obono but has not replied to the messages. Gonzalo Abaha explains that the police have confiscated his cell phone to investigate his communications.
With great joy we received confirmation of the release of our fellow human rights defender in Equatorial Guinea @MelibeaObono illegally held since yesterday in “Guantánamo jail”. We deeply appreciate the efforts made by @MAECgob and by minister @jmalbares . pic.twitter.com/txNyEkNCUM
— Pedro Zerolo Foundation (@FPedroZerolo) August 20, 2023
The arrests of LGTBI activists under the Teodoro Obiang regime have intensified in recent weeks. Especially since the publication of the report Torture, Cruel, Inhuman and degrading Treatment against LGTBQI+ people in Equatorial Guinea, that We Are Part of the World was made public at the headquarters of the European Union in Madrid last May. Obono made the presentation and was accompanied by Juan González Mellizo, Head of Communication of the European Commission Representation in Spain and the former Ombudsman in the Basque Country Iñigo Lamarca, among others.
In the report, for which Obono has been a consultant, she collects testimonies and photographs of violence perpetrated against people from the Guinean LGTBIQ+ community. Many of them on their way through that so-called Guantánamo, like Julia, a 24-year-old trans woman who in 2021 recounted her imprisonment for two weeks in a dark cell in that place: “In the morning they brought dry bread, it was my daily food. Every day, at four o’clock in the afternoon, they took me to the torture room, in the basement, with many stretchers without mattresses. The police officers said that the absence of mattresses is useful because that way the electricity reaches the back of the person through the irons”.
His testimony continues like this: “In the room they had many torture tools, sharp objects such as machetes and knives. I remember seeing a gas tube, a gas outlet. I saw thick wooden sticks, also a place with a pole. They would put the handcuffs on you, with your arms behind you, and leave you hanging. There was also such a thing heated with fire that was placed between your legs. While they tortured you, you watched the face of a mannequin, which is that of an exhausted, tortured, drooling, ugly, crying man. Whenever they tortured me, in any way, they forced me to look at the face of the mannequin”. Julia claims that these acts happened every day at the same time. And that there was no name of hers, but they addressed her by her cell number. “I disappeared from this world and I have never been what I was before. Guantánamo is a torture building, it is nothing else”.
“The publication of this report has gone down well,” says the activist, also writer and book author rats fall in love too. “There has been an attempt to intimidate, there have been arrests, they have been taken to court just for being lesbian or gay and before arriving there they have been beaten by the police,” she explains.
In truth, the atmosphere was already tense with a previous report. It was a survey on human trafficking for the purpose of sexual and labor exploitation in Equatorial Guinea with special attention to the case of sexual minorities. The study had as a title State homophobia.
In it they affirm that the families are the main “traffickers”, since they deliver their homosexual sons or daughters to the police stations “so that, through fifty blows to the rear, they become heterosexual.” “To the fifty beatings in the rear are added the imprisonments. Families determine the days of the confinement ”, they point out.
After the publication of two reports, the persecution of the organization that signs them, Somos Parte del Mundo, has begun. “A month ago, some hooded men attacked the organization’s headquarters in Bata [la capital económica del país] and they wanted to enter but the door was blocked”, recalls Gonzalo Abaha. “In Malabo the Government Delegate came with the police, forcing the door, to investigate us, to find out who we collaborate with, with intimidation. They confiscated what was in the house, ”he explains. This headquarters also serves as a refuge for people from the LGTBIQ+ community who are on the streets. “Since the government has not authorized homosexuality, they made me sign a document where I admitted that these people were homosexual,” he says. The fact that published reports point to personal data at alleged perpetrators of trafficking in minors, such as companies or airlines, is one of the reasons for the persecution, according to Abaha.
Although she is at home, Trifonia Melibea Obono is under the impact of two days in detention: “She is still tired and scared, a little sick,” admits her partner, who indicates that for now she has not wanted to explain what has happened at the place of his arrest. “Nothing goes well there,” warns Abaha, “nobody leaves that prison the way they entered.”
Obono is precisely one of the participants in the documentary state homophobia that Filmin will premiere on September 22 directed by the Cantabrian Richard Zubelzu (The battle of the wind, I am a girl) in which the Guinean LGTBI activists Ángel and Gonzalo are given a voice, who explain the persecution suffered by women and LGTBI people in their country, and how coming out of the closet is taboo within families.
The report that was presented at the EU headquarters in Spain affirms that legal uncertainty governs the lives of LGTBIQ+ people in Equatorial Guinea and that cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of sexual minorities is caused by “the involvement of police, communities of neighbors and military”. Although the Criminal Code that was approved in 2022 does not protect sexual minorities, it does repeal laws that according to activists are still applied, such as a Public Order law from 1980 or the law on Vagrants and Crooks from 1954. They also ask for legislation to be based on the Yogyakarta Principles, which recommend to governments how to apply international legislation on human rights and sexual diversity. On the other hand, they also ask that the educational system and the media disclose that the WHO eliminated homosexuality from the list of mental illnesses in 1990, to promote a change that at least does not make society complicit in legislative abuses and the security forces.
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