However, he did not present any documentation of the alleged achievements in reforming worker rights in Equatorial Guinea so far. Employees who protest unhealthy or dangerous working conditions risk losing their jobs. The disrespect of worker rights, however, is only one small part in a general picture of massive human rights abuses in Equatorial Guinea. The party was itself being infiltrated by government agents trying to convert it to a satellite party. The human rights record of the Government is one of the world's poorest, as documented by the opposition and affirmed by the US State Department.
Abuses are serious and systematic.
They include openly fraudulent elections, extrajudicial killings, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention, looting of private homes, confiscation of property, restrictions of freedom of speech and of the press, limited freedom of religion and freedom of movement, etc. Between one fourth and one third of the Guinean population lives in exile. In light of these systematic abuses, Equatorial Guinea was practically isolated from the protesting outside world during most of the 1990s. Europe, led by the ex-colonial power Spain, froze its cooperation, the US government protested sharply against human rights abuses and the World Bank and the IMF pulled out. This, however, changed with the discovery and commercialisation of offshore petroleum.