Consent at the center of the Baltasar Engonga affair – DW – 08/11/2024

It’s a case that has been setting social media on fire for several days: that of Baltasar Ebang Engonga’s sex tapes in Equatorial Guinea. Director of the National Financial Investigation Agency, he was dismissed from his position by presidential decree.

Baltasar Ebang Engonga, who was in preventive detention when the affair broke out, is also accused, in testimony broadcast by state television, of having kept his videos without consent. A woman who presents herself as one of his partners explained that she “gave her consent” for their antics to be filmed, but she thought that the images had “been immediately deleted” after viewing.

If this affair generates a lot of comments, it also raises several questions.

The analysis of Cyrille Rolande Bechon, jurist and activist, she is responsible for the NGO New Human Rights in Cameroon.

DW: Rolande Bechon What does this matter inspire you, as it raises the question of consent?

Rolande Bechon: The Balthazar affair effectively raises the question of victims’ consent. Consent to be filmed. That the videos be saved and the consent for the use that will be made of the videos that have been taken. So, in human law, we talk more about the question of informed consent, informed means that he or she has understood what are the ins and outs, and above all what will be done with the recording for which she has given her consent.

And so we have two types of consent. We can have explicit consent, that is to say that the victim accepts, perhaps approves by signing a document, that she is filmed and that she accepts what will be done with the recording that was made. do.

There is also implied consent, which means that she knows that she is being recorded, but she does not object.

Now, we are talking about a question of the image, of the privacy of a person who we would expect to talk about here, of informed consent and explicit consent, to what the video, the recording, is done and what use will be made of the video?

In this specific case, it will be difficult to speak of informed consent from the victim. For what ? Because we must analyze the relationship that the victim had with the man.

If professional ethics requires that a person who has a position of vertical superiority in relation to the other cannot really create the conditions for informed consent, consent, acceptance without pressure from the victim , if she’s the boss and in a relationship in which her employee finds himself doing her favors, did she really have the means to say no? We’re not very sure. And that’s why in a professional relationship, when we ask questions about sexual harassment, there is what we call ethics.

There are things that are prohibited in fact because there is not a horizontal relationship.

If it is someone who is a superior, they can put you in conditions that require you to give your consent implicitly.

So here, the question that will be the basis of the analysis is whether the partners really had the opportunity to say no? And that is the whole point of the procedures that must take place. Weren’t these women victims? This is the whole question that must be answered today.

DW: How can we understand that people take the risk of agreeing to be filmed when we know that there is a risk that these videos will fall into inappropriate hands and be broadcast?

There is a problem of awareness, of individual education of people on the fact that the question of data, the question of the protection of personal data is a question which is so crucial and which is so difficult that taking the risk of accepting to be filmed by a stranger, in quotes… Moreover, even when you are filmed by someone you know, you do not always know how this data can be processed given that this data is saved in computer hardware, for which most are does not have control over the use of this computer equipment, we can copy your data to you with a simple click.

Many people do not yet have the culture of the dangers of digital technology. You know that there is a whole debate, don’t you, in the European Union, in the United States, on the question of data protection by the big promoters of social networks like Tiktok, like Facebook, like X, like all the others, the other digital media. This shows how essential this is.

But unfortunately again, we are in a context where people use social networks or even telephones as simply tools of distraction without being aware of all the dangers, really the great dangers that they run when they store their personal data on phones.

DW: What advice do you have to avoid finding yourself in delicate situations such as seeing your intimate images on social networks or elsewhere?

Really, it would be better to say no. The explicit refusal is important, to say I refuse.

And if we notice that we are nevertheless in a situation where we are being recorded, it would be better to indicate an explicit refusal.

Because in the absence of explicit refusal in the face of this situation, we find ourselves in a situation of implicit consent.

You knew we were filming, but you didn’t contest it, you didn’t refuse, you didn’t leave that place.

So, we can consider that you have given implicit consent.

In a situation where we are talking about recording and broadcasting…That means that if there was a plan to broadcast the video, we cannot talk about implicit consent.

We are going to talk about the need to have explicit consent because perhaps money can be made with these videos.

If these videos were sold, it is logical and normal that the images used, those who were filmed, could benefit, right, from the spinoffs or the sale of these images.

So, if he has not done so, we cannot, in this specific case, speak of explicit consent before a court.

So there are so many questions that are as complex as they are difficult that will be raised around the issue.

And that’s why families, instead of seeing what we’re seeing now, where families shoot women, the people who are in these videos, we really expect that the families are leading an important strategic dispute, an important dispute so that this question is raised and addressed and that the States legislate on the question of data protection and the informed consent of victims for the recordings and dissemination of images and the right to image and the dissemination of pictures.