PORTUGAL WANTS END TO DEATH PENALTY IN EQUATORIAL GUINEA OR EXPULSION FROM CPLP

Portugal’s foreign minister said that Equatorial Guinea must abolish the death penalty immediately or its membership of the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries (CPLP) will be illegitimate. “From Portugal’s point of view, [the abolition of the death penalty] has to be immediate”, Augusto Santos Silva said on the sidelines of the 11th CPLP head of states’ conference that ended in Brasilia on November 1st.
For Portugal, there are three essential conditions that Equatorial Guinea has to meet to be a member of the CPLP”: the ratification of the organisation’s articles, the abolition of the death penalty and the generalisation of teaching Portuguese in the country. Hardly anybody speaks Portuguese in this ‘Portuguese-speaking country’.
“We understand that the third demand may take longer, but the other two just depend on the authorities”, Santos Silva said.
In the final declaration signed at the Brasilia summit, Equatorial Guinea dragged its heels again by asking for ‘technical support’ to abolish the death penalty, which the other countries responded to “with satisfaction”.