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afrol.com, 4 October - The US Government significantly has intensified its relationships with Equatorial Guinea, while there are reports of an enhanced oppression of the opposition. This month, the US embassy in Malabo, which has been closed since 1995, will be reopened and the US is by far the biggest investor in the country. The oppositional UDI is alienated by the fact that Western countries "exclusively obey economic interests and give into this regime, marginalizing our people together with the Equatorial Guinean opposition." Last week, the Under-Secretary of the US Department of Labor, Mr. Mc Arthur Deshaser, visited Equatorial Guinea and was received by President Teodoro Obiang Nguema. Deshaser led a delegation of the federal agency, Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), an organization charged with the protection of American investments abroad. OPIC has plaid a key role in facilitating American investments to booming Equatorial Guinea. There has been going on an oil boom in tiny Equatorial Guinea for some four years now, and the GDP has more than tripled in these years. Guineans, however, have not noticed much of this new wealth, as most of the revenue goes to the tiny clan clan around president Obiang and some foreign multinationals, mostly American. "Not one dollar arriving from the oil and gas exploitation and commercialisation figures in neither the national budget nor in the accounts of any other public agency," the oppositional Unión de Demócratas Independientes (UDI) told afrol.com. In June, OPIC approved the agency’s largest-ever loan to a project in sub-Saharan Africa, a US$ 173 million guaranty for the construction, ownership and operation of a methanol plant in Equatorial Guinea. The Board also approved up to US$ 200 million in political risk insurance for the project. The plant will be managed by the Atlantic Methanol Production Company and the Guinean government. With a total project cost of US$ 450 million, the plant will generate 2.500 metric tons per day of methanol from natural gas. During his visit to the UN Millennium Summit, President Teodoro Obiang met with Kirk Robertson, Executive Vice President of OPIC on 13 September. Robertson encouraged President Obiang to continue reform of worker rights and political institutions in his country. However, he did not present any documentation of the alleged achievements in reforming worker rights in Equatorial Guinea so far. In contrast to Robertson's positive assessments, another US federal agency, the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (US Department of State) notes the following on worker rights in Equatorial Guinea: "The Labor Code provides for comprehensive protection for workers from occupational hazards; however, the Government does not enforce this in practice. Employees who protest unhealthy or dangerous working conditions risk losing their jobs." The disrespect of worker rights, however, is only one small part in a general picture of massive human rights abuses in Equatorial Guinea. In its strategy to eliminate the oppositional forces of Equatorial Guinea, the government of Obiang already has achieved to get rid of most political formations, the Unión Popular told afrol.com in September. The party was itself being infiltrated by government agents trying to convert it to a satellite party. The human rights record of the Government is one of the world's poorest, as documented by the opposition and affirmed by the US State Department. Abuses are serious and systematic. They include openly fraudulent elections, extrajudicial killings, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention, looting of private homes, confiscation of property, restrictions of freedom of speech and of the press, limited freedom of religion and freedom of movement, etc. Between one fourth and one third of the Guinean population lives in exile. In light of these systematic abuses, Equatorial Guinea was practically isolated from the protesting outside world during most of the 1990s. Europe, led by the ex-colonial power Spain, froze its cooperation, the US government protested sharply against human rights abuses and the World Bank and the IMF pulled out. This, however, changed with the discovery and commercialisation of offshore petroleum. In October 1996, Mobil and the Houston-based United Meridian Corporation (UMC), celebrated the first oil production from the Zafiro field. It had only gone 18 months since its discovery. Next year, it is predicted that the country, with some 400.000 inhabitants, will become Africa's fourth biggest oil producer. Although human rights abuses rather have increased during the last four years, the new found wealth opened doors to foreign governments. American and French companies achieved the first contracts, coupled with improved bilateral ties. Since the OPIC approved the agency’s largest-ever loan to a project in sub-Saharan Africa in June 2000, it has actively promoted US investment of private capital in Equatorial Guinea. Last month, President Obiang met with the president of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, discussing the possibilities for a renewed economic cooperation between the European Union and Equatorial Guinea. Also in September 2000, Obiang met with his Nigerian counterpart, President Olusegun Obasanjo, and ended the long-lasting hostile relationship between the two neighbours. In October, Spanish President José María Aznar will travel to Malabo to negotiate the entrance of the Spanish oil company REPSOL into the Equatorial Guinean oil adventure. Afrol.com was recently informed by Daniel M. Oyono, the President of the oppositional party, UDI, that the situation in Equatorial Guinea "has grown worse only the last weeks, as the Obiang regime seems to have turned into a more paranoid policy, suspecting everybody to be oppositional, and thus increased the political persecution." US investors thus are not the only ones acting in Equatorial Guinea. However, they have been by far the most important investors, providing the basic infrastructure to make the oil boom possible. Thus, they have opened the doors for other investors, and closed the doors for political reforms.
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