Freedom House has released its annual report “Worst of the Worst: The World’s Most Repressive Societies”. The report, which ranks the world’s worst violators of political and civil liberties, ranks Equatorial Guinea among the nine worst countries, alongside Burma, Eritrea, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

The report highlights the country’s highly restrictive political environment, which includes the close monitoring of opposition parties and a lack of credible elections. The country has no independent media, suffers from severely curtailed freedoms of assembly and association, and requires government authorization for political gatherings. Security forces carry out acts of torture, extrajudicial killings, and arbitrary detentions with impunity. The president, Teodoro Obiang, and members of his inner circle continue to accumulate vast fortunes from the country’s oil revenues. 

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