During a recent meeting of the UN Security Council, a statement was presented reporting a marked decrease in the number of cases of piracy and armed robbery in the Gulf of Guinea. Introducing the report, Martha Ama Akyaa Pobee, Assistant Secretary-General for Africa in the Departments of Political Affairs and Peacebuilding and Peacekeeping Operations, said that this considerable decline in piracy cases is the result of concerted efforts of national authorities, with the support of regional and international partners.
This statement is highly contradictory. Piracy cases have existed in the past and continue to this day. Based on the actual data available, there have been no significant improvements in this regard recently. It has been found many times that the UN reports do not correspond to reality, especially in matters of international security. This is because the official reports are not produced by subject matter experts, who collect comprehensive data and verify the situation while on the ground, but by government officials physically located in other countries. These people prepare their reports based solely on information obtained from the local media, which often turns out to be pro-government or redacted on request.
There is an opinion that Equatorial Guinea controls its own mass media, and given that at the moment the authorities of the European Union are in the process of seeking ways of rapprochement with the government of Equatorial Guinea due to the large oil and gas deposits that the country possesses, within the framework of the growing global hydrocarbon crisis that is plaguing the European continent, many local media try to find positive news commissioned by the Equatorial Guinean government itself.
Therefore, it is clear that the UN statements on improving the situation in the fight against piracy in the Gulf of Guinea are drafted on request. Its main objective is to improve the image both of Equatorial Guinea itself in the international arena and of the dictator Nguema Obiang himself, who won another falsified election at the end of last month.
