Sawt Falasteen - Pope in Equatorial Guinea criticises prison conditions

The leader of the world's Catholics was on the second day of his visit to the oil-rich African nation, visiting President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo's stronghold of Mongomo, near the border with Gabon.

At a mass in Mongomo attended by some 100,000 followers, the US-born pontiff, 70, urged the country, where the majority of people live in poverty, to close the gap between "the privileged and the disadvantaged".

"May there be greater room for freedom and may the dignity of the human person always be safeguarded," he told the congregation, including Obiang, who has ruled with an iron fist since 1979 and is regularly accused of rights abuses.

"My thoughts go to the poorest, to families experiencing difficulty and to prisoners who are often forced to live in troubling hygienic and sanitary conditions."

The pope's comments, although delivered diplomatically, are a very rare denunciation of the country, which is criticised for stifling freedom of expression.

He was due to meet inmates at the prison in Bata, the economic capital and biggest city on the shores of the Gulf of Guinea.

In a 2023 report, the US State Department documented cases of torture, extreme overcrowding and deplorable sanitary conditions in Equatorial Guinea's prisons.

Amnesty International in 2021 called detainees "forgotten people", who are often jailed in notorious prisons such as Bata after flawed trials.

"Since they enter the prison walls, they have neither been seen nor heard from, and their relatives do not know whether they are alive or dead," the global rights monitor said.

- Balloons -

Pope Leo was welcomed at the Mongomo basilica in a supercharged atmosphere, with fireworks and a release of balloons celebrating his arrival, plus a tour through cheering crowds in the popemobile.

He has to strike a delicate balance in Equatorial Guinea, supporting the faithful without backing the government of Obiang, who has been in power since 1979 and at 83 is the world's longest-serving head of state who is not a monarch.

After his visit to Bata prison, he will pay tribute to the victims of a deadly accident that rocked the coastal city in 2021, when a fire set off a series of explosions at a munitions depot that killed more than 100 people and wounded around 600 others.

The pope arrived in Equatorial Guinea on Tuesday after stops in Algeria, Cameroon and Angola.

In a speech, he urged the country to place itself "in the service of law and justice" -- pointed remarks in an authoritarian country regularly accused of rights abuses.

But his tone was more measured than on his previous stops, when he lambasted the "tyrants" ransacking the world, condemned "exploitation" by the rich and powerful, and clashed with Donald Trump after the US president took issue with his call for an end to the Middle East war.

Eighty percent of the small coastal country's two million people are Catholics, a legacy of Spanish colonisation.

Hydrocarbon production accounts for 46 percent of Equatorial Guinea's economy and more than 90 percent of exports, according to African Development Bank figures.

But according to Human Rights Watch, "vast oil revenues fund lavish lifestyles for the small elite surrounding the president, while a large proportion of the population continues to live in poverty".

The pope will wrap up his 11-day, 18,000-kilometre (11,200-mile) Africa trip on Thursday with an open-air Mass in the capital, Malabo, then return to Rome.

Y.Zaher--SF-PST