On October 13, I walked onto a stage in New York holding two gloves.
The first was a three-cent medical glove, the kind missing from hospitals in my country, even though oil has made Equatorial Guinea one of Africa’s richest nations. The second was a replica of the crystal-studded Michael Jackson glove our Vice President bought with money stolen from our people.
Those two gloves should never tell the story of the same nation. Yet together they tell the story of Equatorial Guinea.
I know that story personally. My sister died young, while bringing a new life into the world, in a hospital with no doctor and no electricity. My father died in the same hospital, with no dialysis and no oxygen. They did not die of poverty. They died of theft. For two decades, I have dedicated my life to naming that theft out loud, even though it means I cannot go home, for now.
That work is why Human Rights First presented me with its 2026 Global Accountability Guardian Award. But the award belongs to others: to Dr. Wenceslao Mansogo and Fabián Nsue Nguema, who gave their lives to fighting impunity; to Anacleto Micha, Paysa Elo, and Liberato Bielo, imprisoned since 2024 for daring to speak; and to Ahmed Soliman, Samson Birhane, and Filimon Ghirmay.
Read my remarks from that night.
A new chapter, written in Washington
Ahmed, Samson, and Filimon are not Equatoguinean. Late last year, the United States paid Equatorial Guinea’s government $7.5 million to accept up to 400 deportees from other countries. ICE shackled and flew them to Malabo, where they were held in a hotel and denied lawyers. Some of them have been tortured, and of the sixty-five sent so far, twenty-seven have been sent back to the countries they fled.
Those remaining in Malabo face the same fate. What happens to them depends on what we do in the coming weeks.
What gives me hope
Working with the Equatoguinean Commission of Jurists, African human rights organizations and U.S. immigration attorneys, we have taken the case to the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, briefed Congress, and supported refugees in U.S. courts. It is working: one refugee has been granted asylum, and a federal judge has ordered the U.S. government to bring Ahmed home.
Your gift is the next proof that the world is watching
$50 provides medication and hygiene supplies for a deportee
$100 helps a political prisoner’s family stay fed and represented for a month
$250 helps a local lawyer file a habeas corpus and asylum petition
$500 funds a year of secure communications for an activist
$1,000 sends a young activist to a human rights and anti-corruption seminar
Antonio Machado wrote: Caminante no hay camino, se hace camino al andar. We make the road by walking. Please walk it with us.
Thank you,
Tutu Alicante
Executive Director, EG Justice
P.S. Please forward this to one person who should know what is happening in Equatorial Guinea.