EQUATORIAL GUINEA: NEW PENAL CODE WITH NO DEATH PENALTY ‘VERY SOON’ – AMBASSADOR

July 14, 2021:

The ambassador of Equatorial Guinea in Lisbon said on 13 July 2021 that his country will “very soon” finalise a new Penal Code, eliminating the death penalty, but warned that the process should be done calmly.
The abolition of the death penalty from the legal system is one of the commitments made by Equatorial Guinea when it joined the CPLP (Community of Portuguese Language Countries) as a full member in July 2014 at the Dili summit. Seven years later, that step remains unfulfilled.
In an interview with Lusa, the Equatorial Guinean ambassador in Lisbon and of the mission to the CPLP, Tito Mba Ada, said that parliament has the new Penal Code for debate and vote, which will replace the current document, dating from 1963, at the time, Franco’s Spain.
“The text of the bill will be forwarded for second reading in the Senate and will then be promulgated by the President. This is a process that cannot be hurried and will very soon have its expected conclusion”.
Urged to set a deadline for this approval, which has been successively postponed, Mba Ada reiterated that it will be “very soon”. 
“Equatorial Guinea is a country with great respect for human rights,” he stressed, stating that even before joining the CPLP, the country already applied amnesties and pardons to those sentenced to capital punishment. 
The ambassador reiterated that the country introduced a moratorium on the death penalty “the day after accession” and “the death penalty is no longer practised in Equatorial Guinea.”
The CPLP is made up of Angola, Brazil, Cabo Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Mozambique, Portugal, Sao Tome and Principe and East Timor.