Civil-Rights Group Criticized for Summit in Equatorial Guinea

A foundation named for a late American civil rights leader is under fire from human rights campaigners for hosting a five-day summit in Equatorial Guinea, reports the Associated Press.

Activists called on the Leon H. Sullivan Foundation to cancel the August meeting at a resort in the West African nation, whose government has been accused of torturing political opponents, extrajudicial killings, and widespread official corruption. Thor Halvorssen, president of the Human Rights Foundation, said the foundation is “destroying the legacy of its namesake” by cooperating with the Equatorial Guinea regime.

Mr. Sullivan, who died in 2001, campaigned against apartheid and formulated the Sullivan Principles, a code of conduct for companies doing business in South Africa could help black workers and communities under that country’s former racist regime.

His daughter, Hope Sullivan Masters, defended the summit plan, calling it a “vile assertion” that the event would damage her father’s legacy and asserting that Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, who has been in office since 1979, “has modernized his country and has implemented major political reforms.”