"Obiang's government has fought back by accusing critics of the prize of "showing their true colonialist, discriminatory, racist and prejudiced identity, by not accepting that an African president can confer an award of this kind"".
Nguema
Mboge
I followed your recent conversations with Suntou on Pan Afrcanism. Thanks to those conversations, our friend Bailo is now enamoured of the queen of social sciences. History of course. I thank you for advancing a Pan Africanism that aims to rescue the idea from the clutches of tyrants whose speciality is to hide behind an otherwise noble concept. Going by the above, Nguema is in that league of disgraceful African ruler
LJDarbo
From: Modou Mboge <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Unesco suspends prize funded by Equatorial Guinea dictator
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Wednesday, 16 June, 2010, 19:08
Koto Oko,
Thank you for sharing this information. I have been following this story for a while and I am glad that UNESCO has now heeded the protestations from various organisations and individuals about the source of funding for this Human Rights award. I could not understand the reasoning behind UNESCO accepting funds from a despicable, corrupt, human rights abuser such as Nguema.
Best,
Mboge
On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 7:54 PM, oko drammeh <[log in to unmask]" rel=nofollow target=_blank ymailto="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Unesco suspends prize funded by Equatorial Guinea dictator
Obiang Nguema Mbasogo award put on hold after human rights groups accuse Unesco of 'laundering reputation of kleptocrat'
* Chris McGreal in Washington
* guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 16 June 2010 07.39
Unesco has suspended a prize funded by Equatorial Guinea's president Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. Photograph: Eric Cabanis/AFP/Getty Images
The UN's scientific and cultural organisation, Unesco, has put on hold the award of a prize for "improving
the quality of human life" paid for and named after one of Africa's most authoritarian, brutal and corrupt rulers.
The prize, aimed at scientists, is funded with a $3m (£2m) donation by President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea who is regarded as having made a major contribution to human misery as well as curtailing more than a few lives. It was to have been awarded later this month but has been suspended following an international outcry.
Obiang, 68, is known not only for having his predecessor executed and the arbitrary arrest and torture of political opponents but for plundering his country's oil wealth while many of its people live in poverty.
Equatorial Guinea's per capita income has risen a hundred fold in 20 years to the highest in Africa because of oil but many of its 680,000 people survive on less than £1 a day. Life expectancy is just 49 years.
The prize money was technically awarded to Unesco by the
Obiang Nguema Mbasogo Foundation for the Preservation of Life. Human Rights groups and anti-corruption organisations have accused Unesco of "laundering the reputation of a kleptocrat with an appalling human rights record". Desmond Tutu, the former archbishop of Cape Town and Nobel peace prize winner, said Unesco "is allowing itself to burnish the unsavoury reputation of a dictator" and that the money Obiang pledged for the prize in order to glorify himself was taken from the people of Equatorial Guinea on whom it should now be spent.
Seven recipients of a Unesco prize for courageous journalists wrote to the organisation objecting to an award, the Unesco Obiang Nguema Mbasogo International Prize for Research , named after "a leader who oppresses the media".
On Monday the US ambassador to Unesco, David Killion, urged the organisation to suspend the award in a belated show of disapproval of Obiang by Washington, which has generally
overlooked the shortcomings of his rule since the discovery of oil in Equatorial Guinea.
The US, which is the largest contributor to Unesco's budget, and some other western nations did not raise objections in April when a majority on the organisation's 58-nation board brushed aside protests over the award. African nations have supported Obiang over the prize.
But yesterday, Unesco's director general, Irina Bokova, told the Unesco board that the awarding of the prize needed to be put on hold for the good of the organisation's reputation.
"I have heard the voices of the many intellectuals, scientists, journalists and of course governments and parliamentarians who have appealed to me to protect and preserve the prestige of the organisation," she said. "I have come to you with a strong message of alarm and anxiety Š We must be courageous and recognise our responsibilities, for it is our organisation that is at stake."
A decision on the future
of the prize will be taken at a board meeting in October.
About 270 organisations that united to campaign against the award, including Human Rights Watch, welcomed the delay but said that the prize must be cancelled.
"The coalition reiterated its calls for the funds behind the prize to be used to promote basic education and address other needs of Equatorial Guinea's people," they said.
Obiang's government has fought back by accusing critics of the prize of "showing their true colonialist, discriminatory, racist and prejudiced identity, by not accepting that an African president can confer an award of this kind".
"There exists a great deal of misperception about Equatorial Guinea, an issue that is partly our fault since we have not always responded to inaccuracies that have appeared in the international press or have been perpetuated by our critics. This will now change," it said.
Changing that perception may prove difficult.
Obiang served his uncle and Equatorial Guinea's previous ruler, Francisco Macias Nguema, as a military governor and then head of the national guard during a bloody reign of terror during the 1970s in which it is estimated half of the population were killed or fled abroad. Obiang seized power in 1979, put his uncle on trial but cut the hearing short when Macias started talking about Obiang's own crimes. Macias was then sentenced and shot.
When Equatorial Guinea was on the brink of becoming an oil rich nation in the mid-1990s, Obiang promised that it would be the Kuwait of Africa. Few
would call it that today.
Obiang has decreed the management of petroleum revenues to be a state secret so it is not known exactly where the billions of dollars in annual revenue goes, except that it does not go to the people.
A US Senate inquiry found that Obiang had $700m deposited with one US bank alone.
Four years ago one of his sons, Teodorin, paid $35m for an eight-bedroom mansion, designer golf course and sprawling gardens over 6.4 hectares (16 acres) in Malibu, California, near the house of Britney Spears even though he is officially listed as earning just £3,000 a month as a minister in his father's government. It was the latest addition to an array of properties and expensive cars acquired by Obiang junior.
Equatorial Guinea state radio has declared Obiang to be a god who is "in permanent contact with the almighty" and can "kill anyone without being called to account".
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