Spain urged to cancel Guinea match

A Spanish human rights group is calling on Spain to cancel plans to play a friendly match against Equatorial Guinea, accusing the west African nation's government of torture and arbitrary detentions.

 

The Spanish Association for Human Rights (APDHE) expressed its "outright rejection" of the match to be played on Saturday in the Equatorial Guinea capital of Malabo in a letter to Spain's football federation president, Angel Maria Villa Llona.

 

"We ask you to immediately suspend this football match," the APDHE said.

 

The government of the small oil-rich country has "complete scorn" for human rights, the group said in the letter, dated November 11 but released to the media on Wednesday.

 

"It systematically practises torture and arbitrary detention and subjects all citizens, civil organisations and political formations that are not aligned to it to extreme repression," the rights group said.

 

Spain's football federation would share a table and tribune with authorities who had committed "aberrant" crimes, the group said, warning that as world and European champions, Spain was handing the Equatorial Guinea government a propaganda coup with its decision.

 

Amnesty International issued a statement, too, saying it was taking advantage of the football match to urge Equatorial Guinea to free Agustin Esono Nsogo, owner and director of a private school who has a family connection to the opposition party Union Popular.

 

Amnesty said he had been detained on October 17 last year for political reasons and it demanded his immediate and unconditional release.

The international rights group accused the army of carrying out extrajudicial killings with impunity.

 

Amnesty said it also had documented various cases of torture, some of which ended in death.

 

Equatorial Guinea generates around 95 percent of its income from oil, yet many of its 700,000 inhabitants live in poverty.

It has been under President Teodoro Obiang Nguema's iron-fisted rule for 34 years.

 

The 71-year-old Obiang came to power in the former Spanish colony after toppling his despotic uncle in a coup in 1979 and having him shot.

 

He is Africa's longest-serving leader and overwhelmingly won elections earlier this year in polls that were denounced as a sham by the opposition.

 

- Sapa-AFP