Interviews with Tutu Alicante

There is a famous saying by Lord Acton: Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely. Equatorial Guinea is a clear example where absolute power has corrupted the government absolutely. Laws are important because they offer a parameter, a space within which we human beings can operate and act and interact with each other. And in the case of a nation, laws are quintessential in guiding the powers of the state, the powers of agents of the state and the powers of the people who are ruled or governed by that government. Rule of law – without rule of law in a place like Equatorial Guinea, you end up with a government that uses assets of the state as if they were their own and no one can demand any accountability.

I’ll give you an anecdote. President Obiang in 2008 made a donation to UNESCO, $3 million donation, to create an award named after him, to honor science and technology. [After public pressure, UNESCO later renamed the award the UNESCO-Equatorial Guinea International Prize for Research in the Life Sciences.] The check given to UNESCO came from the Ministry of Treasury of Equatorial Guinea. Obiang reported the donation as coming from the Obiang Nguema Mbasogo Foundation.

When we contacted UNESCO and told them that an award named after Obiang, supposedly with money from his foundation, which up to that point did not exist, is only going to legitimize a horrible dictator in the eyes of the world, and it took UNESCO three years to figure out that what we’re saying is true. Yet in the end, that award was just approved in March of 2011– in 2012. Just three – two months ago.

Why was it approved? Because President Obiang had the money to lobby enough governments from African countries, the Middle East and a few others in Latin America, namely Venezuela, Cuba and Brazil, to win the vote once they got to UNESCO, you know. And this is one of those situations where if we had laws inside the country that could guarantee that a president cannot use money from the public treasury to create an award or to make a donation, that could have been stopped.

Tutu Alicante is a human rights lawyer from the island of Annobon in Equatorial Guinea. In 1993, Mr. Alicante was in a Roman Catholic seminary, preparing for the priesthood. A group of citizens, among them one of Mr. Alicante’s cousins, organized a peaceful demonstration at the governor’s house calling for respect for human rights and measures to address widespread poverty. In response, government forces arrested and killed a number of the demonstrators and burned Mr. Alicante’s family home to the ground. He left Equatorial Guinea in 1994 to pursue his education abroad.

After obtaining a law degree from the University of Tennessee and a Masters in Law from Columbia University, he worked on legal defense programs for migrant farm workers and as a consultant for a branch of the Open Society Institute promoting legal accountability and transparency in extractive industries.

Tutu Alicante founded and serves as Executive Director of EG Justice, a nonprofit and nongovernmental organization that educates, empowers, and engages a new generation of democracy and human rights advocates at home and abroad. It undertakes grassroots campaigns to reform institutions inside Equatorial Guinea and
documents human rights violations, collecting oral and written testimonies inside the country and abroad to hold violators accountable. EG Justice publishes periodic reports and educates the public. EG Justice collaborates with international institutions to bring critical human rights issues to the attention of global policymakers, including the United Nations, the African Union, and other multilateral organizations. It undertakes and supports legal advocacy to hold human rights abusers accountable in local, regional, and international tribunals and works closely with community-based partners to empower them through the litigation process.

Follow Tutu Alicante on Twitter at @TutuAlicante and follow EG Justice on Twitter at @EGJustice