Man the churches call the Caligula of Africa

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33741, 14 January 1975, Page 17

Man the churches call the Caligula of Africa

Refugees from Equatorial Guinea, which secured its independence from Spain seven years ago, claimed in Madrid that more than 300 people had been executed by order of President Francisco Macias Nguema in the last five years. And the World Council of Churches has denounced Macias as a ‘‘modern Caligula” who had turned his country into one vast concentration camp, Philip Jacobson, of the “Sunday Times,” London, reports from Douala, Cameroun.

They came for Elias, a thin, bespectacled African in his late thirties, as he was preparing to leave on a business trip to Spain. He was told that Macias wanted him, and was hustled off to the residential palace which lies behind the 10ft wall which Macias built to encircle his residence, the military barracks and key government offices in the centre of Malabo, the capital formerly known as Santa Isabela. Elias was told he h:.d been fined £7OOO. No further explanation was offered: he had 24 hours to raise the money.

Elias was then a wealthy man with a string of businesses in Rio Muni, the mainland enclave. He collected the money and handed it over. It did not save him: he was thrown into gaol in Malabo. It was the beginning of an ordeal which continued for two years, during which, Elias says, he was tortured regularly and witnessed the murder of friends, relatives and business associates almost every week. Notorious gaol

From Malabo, Elias was taken to the notorious gaol in Bata. “The first day, they forced me to stand for 24 hours in filthy water and mud up to my net... Then they beat me for a long time, using a bundle of sticks until they had r'.l been broken on me. “Two soldiers stood on my neck and feet while I was beaten. Five or six prisoners were beaten like this every day and I got at least Itwo beatings every week.”

According to Elias, the beatings “tore our backs apart”: He showed me bis criss-crossed scars. Another torture was to force prisoners to stuff their mouths full of very hot red peppers and swallow them. “Drink your coffee,” the guards would laugh. The worst treatment was reserved for such “politicals” as Elias. Some of the most important politicals had had their tendons cut to prevent attempts to escape: others were forced to fight each other with clubs for the amusement of guards. “Two or three men would be taken from the cells most days and they never ca r .e back,” Elias says. “In one period of two month?, 69 people were killed. I marked every one of the walls of my cell with a nail.” One victim, Elias recalls, was the former governor of! the Centra’ Bank, Fredericoi Ngomo: his signature still! appears on some Eqifatorial ( Guinea banknotes. Another. was formerly governor of i Rio Muni, the fath r of! seven children. Other survivors of the gaols also compiled their own death lists. Time and again, the same names crop up. “This one, Ricardo, was

my brother-in-law” one elderly man told me. ‘‘He was married to a Spanish woman. They accused him of plotting against Macias and shot him. I collected the body myself.”

Another man, in tears, described how his uncle, Luis, and his uncle’s eldest son, Esteban, were killed on the same day in different parts of the country. He looks after both their families now. Most of those who died in the gaols of Equatorial Guinea were members of the same tribe as Macias, the mainland Fangs. They represent virtually the entire trained and educated section of the Fang population: teachers, civil servants, administrators, businessmen. Macias seems determined to wipe out this tiny skilled infrastructure.

“Many of us were strongly opposed to the choice of the Macias as President when we became independent” one refugee, an engineer from Bata, explained. “Some of us spoke against him in public, and his spies reported everything that was said privately. He has been taking his revenge ever since.” Two-thirds dead According to well-placed observers, two-thirds of the members of the National Assembly elected in 1968 are now dead. The assembly itself was dissolved by Macias a few months after i dependence. The president now runs everything himself: his official title is “President for Life, major-general of the armed forces, great maestro of popular education, science and traditional culture, President of the United National Workers’ Party and the only miracle of Equatorial Guinea.”

From time to time, without explanation, some political prisoners would be released from gaol, only to be re-arrested later. This happened more than once to Elias. “I am a Christian and I never lost faith in my God. That can be the only reason why I lived when so many others were killed.” The last time he was released, coughing blood after nine consecutive days of beating and long immersions in the water-pit, Elias was ordered to return to his

home village in Rio Muni and stay there. Some weeks later, on a visit to Bata, his wife was warned by a friend that Elias would soon be picked up and executed. Next day, he and his wife slipped across the border into Cameroun. The dense rain forests along the frontier make effective patrolling impossible and many refugees escape this way. Others cross the Kye river into Gabon. Coups feared A preoccupation with coups amounting to acute paranoia has always characterised the Macias regime. After encouraging attacks on the European community with venomous broadcasts, Macias turned his attentions to possible competitors within his own government. The first victim was the Foreign Minister, Atanasio Ndongo, a suave Fang who, naturally, maintained close contacts with Spain. According to the official — Macias — version of events, Ndongo attempted to take over the presidential palace in Bata. Macias stormed the palace, pistol in hand. Ndongo was so terrified that he jumped from a second story window. Macias showed an American journalist a photograph he had taken of Ndongo’s bloodied, uncon" ! ous figure lying in the courtyard: it was surrounded by whips and broken sticks.

One of his aides, Saturnino Ibongo, ambassador to the United Nations, was also arrested and died in gaol. Macias insists that he had poisoned himself, but eyewitnesses reported that Ibongo was beaten to death. Macias, who is turning increasingly for aid and assistance to China, Cuba and Russia, issues decrees order-

ing priests in this overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country to place his portrait besides the altar in every church and extol his virtues as President at every service.

‘‘We march with . lac.as/ Always with Macias. Nothing without Macias” go the chants whenever the President appears on ceremonial occasions.

“Not Caligula,” one foreign observer said recently, “Nero.”

Carmel lo Nyono Nca Manene, Equatorial Guinea’s charge d’affaires in Madrid, admitted that “a number” of Macias’s political opponents had been executed or died in gaol. But he denied that the number ran into hundreds. There were not more than 15 political prisoners in Equatorial Guinea, he said.