N°33 – In the name of the father and the brother

Madrid, 18th September
In Equatorial Guinea, if one family member is against the dictatorship, then the whole family is systematically persecuted. That is how we grew up, in that turbulence. 

My name is Fausta Nsé and I was born on the 10th December 1973. My father is known to all Guineans for being the first high-ranking official of the dictatorship who dared to resign after asking Obiang (President of Equatorial Guinea since 1979, ed.) for more freedom and democracy. Since then he has been persecuted for almost all his life, and we, his children – three boys and four girls – grew up with that persecution. The dictator never makes things easy.

One day, in November 2019, I suddenly received a WhatsApp audio telling me that there were rumours that my brother Martín had been taken and was missing. Nobody knew where he was or what had become of him, until months later, when videos appeared of a military trial in Guinea in which Martín and his companions were seen in prison uniforms, looking very emaciated.

When I received the news, I was very upset. And to this day I haven’t gotten over it. I can’t get over it.

In one of the videos Martín says “we came out of a very bad place”, and at that point you understand that these people have tortured them. When you listen to the treatment that they’ve been subjected to, it’s an unbearable thing to hear and see. After that we began the fight that we are still currently battling in Spain, with demonstrations and a lawsuit.

My father was able to flee the country and go to Gabon with my uncle in 1997. They were exiled there, but the dictator used the same method he is using now with my brother Martín: he sent a team to kidnap them and take them back to Guinea. There they put him in the worst prison in the country, where he was subject to 6 or 7 years of torture. That’s why my father is now taking the kidnapping and imprisonment of Martín very badly; he went through the same thing, and he knows what his son is suffering.

Fausta

Fausta is the daughter, sister, niece and wife of Guinean opponents repressed by the dictatorship of Teodoro Obiang. She herself is a fighter for freedom and against the impunity of a tyranny that has been in power since 1979. She has been living in exile in Madrid for seven years and is one of the initiators of a lawsuit in the Spanish National Court for the kidnapping of four activists, including her brother Martín.

This story was originally published in our In Vivo newsletter. To receive other similar stories with cultural recommendations every fortnight, subscribe to our free newsletter.