Amnesty calls for release of rights detainees

Amnesty International has called for the release of three people being held in Equatorial Guinea, one of whom it said was arrested last year for possessing an Amnesty International document.

The human rights body said at the weekend that Mariano Oyono Ndong, who was arrested in May 1999 and accused of possessing a 1998 Amnesty International document, was put on trial together with army sergeant Antonio Engonga Bibang and Carmelo Biko Ngua. Both men, it said, were charged with “insults against the government and the armed forces”.

However, Amnesty said: “In fact these three people appear to have been arrested for being members of the Fuerza Demócrata Republicana, the Democratic Republican Force, an opposition political party which has been refused official recognition.”

In recent years, Amnesty said, hundreds of peaceful political activists had been arrested and held without charge or trial “for exercising their rights to freedom of expression and assembly”.

Amnesty also called on the government to end arbitrary arrests, torture, ill-treatment and unfair trials. Amnesty named Juan Obiang Latte and Teodoro Abeso Nguema as being detained in 1999 for two months for allegedly photocopying an article published by the Spanish daily, ‘El Mundo’, that alleged President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, was ill.

Amnesty said people were being arrested and prosecuted for holding and expressing opinion; seeking information, being in possession of and imparting it. It called on the government to release, immediately, those detained “for simply exercising their rights to freedom of expression and assembly”.