Ik moest het ook opzoeken in de atlas, Equatoriaal Guinea. Het blijkt te liggen tussen Kameroen en Gabon. Op (in?) het internet-tijdschrift Slate van 24 juni 2008 vond ik een bericht over Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, sinds 1979 de tirannieke baas van dit Afrikaanse land. Peter Maass (“contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine” zo wordt hij geïntroduceerd) was
Maar niet voor ik heel kort stilsta bij dat ‘contributing writer’. Dat lijkt me wat dubbelop: ‘bijdragend schrijver’. Of vertaal je dat met ‘schrijver van bijdragen’? Maar dat is toch wat een schrijver voor de krant doet, bijdragen? Dus je bent óf een writer voor de krant óf een contributor, maar niet allebei. Vreemd kan Amerikaans-Engels soms zijn…
[...]
But Mugabe may not be Africa’s worst. That prize arguably goes to Teodoro Obiang, the ruler of Equatorial Guinea whose life seems a parody of the dictator genre. Years of violent apprenticeship in a genocidal regime led by a crazy uncle? Check. Power grab in a coup against the murderous uncle? Check. Execution of now-deposed uncle by firing squad? Check. Proclamation of self as “the liberator” of the nation? Check. Govern for decades in a way that prompts human rights groups to accuse your regime of murder, torture, and corruption? Check, check, and check.
Obiang, who seized power in 1979, had promised to be kinder and gentler than his predecessor, but in the 1990s, even the U.S. ambassador to Equatorial Guinea received a death threat from a regime insider, the ambassador has said, and had to be evacuated. Not long after that, offshore oil was discovered, but the first wave of revenues—about $700 million—was transferred into secret accounts under Obiang’s personal control. The latest chapter, written in the last month, may be the least surprising, because Obiang’s ruling party won 99 of the 100 seats in legislative elections. A government press release, hailing Obiang as the “Militant Brother Founding President of the PDGE,” carried the headline, “Democracy at Its Peak in Equatorial Guinea.”
[…]
To […] understand a crucial reason why we hear little about Obiang, you need to know that since oil was found in the country’s waters in the Gulf of Guinea, Exxon-Mobil, Marathon Oil, Chevron, and other firms have invested more than $10 billion to extract the treasure, transforming Equatorial Guinea into the third-largest energy exporter in sub-Saharan Africa. But the first wave of revenues seemed to disappear—the people of Equatorial Guinea remained as poor, ill-housed, uneducated, and unhealthy as ever. Rather than putting the money into a transparent government account and using the proceeds for social services, Obiang hoarded it in accounts he personally controlled at Riggs Bank in Washington, D.C. An investigation by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency led to millions of dollars in money-laundering fines against Riggs, but Obiang was not charged. In fact, things only got sweeter. In 2006, he was invited to Washington and met Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who called him a “good friend.”
[…]
King Abdullah is a “good friend,” too, but the Saudi monarch controls more than 260 billion barrels of oil; the morals-for-oil transaction is plausible if it nets us a lot of gas, albeit at $4 a gallon. Obiang controls 1.1 billion barrels of oil—a global pittance. We shouldn’t bow to him, and we don’t even need to.
[…]
[...], because Obiang is not just a worse tyrant, he is a better story. The U.S. government is not propping up Mugabe, but with billions invested by American companies in Equatorial Guinea, it is propping up Obiang. The Equatorial Guinean minister who owns the building that houses the U.S. Embassy in Malabo has even been accused of torture by human rights organizations. Instead of seeking an indictment against the man, the U.S. government is putting rent money in his pocket. (A lot of rent money, actually—$17,500 a month.) You haven’t heard that before? The tragedy is that you might not hear of it again.
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