EQUATORIAL GUINEA : Luminaries Call for Rejection of UNESCO-Obiang Prize

Editor's Choice

Most...

Viewed
Commented


1.	KENYA ELECTIONS: Concern as Aspirants Retreat to their Ethnic Roots
2.	KENYA: Luhya Community Rejects Politics of Ethnicity
3.	KENYA: New Constitution Restores Foreign Investors' Confidence
4.	SOUTH AFRICA: Commission concludes settlement with Oceana
5.	Uganda Troops Capture Senior Leader of the Lord Resistance Army


1.	KENYA: New Constitution Restores Foreign Investors' Confidence
2.	International Organisation of Migration Appeals for Funding to Airlift Stranded...
3.	African Women Making Changes in Africa
4.	Uganda Troops Capture Senior Leader of the Lord Resistance Army
5.	KENYA: The Mathenge Menace

Submitted by IQ4News on Fri, 30/09/2011 - 10:44am

Eighteen literary and cultural leaders from Africa and around the world urged UNESCO to block an effort by the government of Equatorial Guinea to reinstitute a prize named for and financed by Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.

In a letter addressed to Irina Bokova, director-general of UNESCO, the prominent figures said they are “deeply troubled by the well-documented record of human rights abuse, repression of press freedom, and official corruption that have marked [Obiang’s] rule.”

Signatories to the letter include Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, four UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize Laureates, and other noted writers and journalists. These eminent individuals, some of whom have previously expressed their opposition to this award, called for its definitive cancelation.

The UNESCO-Obiang Nguema Mbasogo International Prize for Research in the Life Sciences was indefinitely suspended last year after a global campaign by civil society groups that was coordinated by EG Justice. The future of the prize is to be reconsidered by the governing executive board of UNESCO, which is meeting in Paris, on September 30, 2011, at the initiative of African countries.

The Letter

Click here to read the letter

“It is unfortunate that the time and resources expended by President Obiang to establish the prize are not directed at implementing the reforms that he regularly mentions,” said Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, one of the signatories of the letter, in a separate opinion article published in the African press explaining his opposition to the UNESCO-Obiang prize. “President Obiang should focus his efforts on remaking Equatorial Guinea into an open, rights-respecting democracy fitting for these times.”