U.S. senator again presses Gambia on missing journalist
On Thursday, U.S. Senator Richard Durbin sent a letter to Gambia’s justice minister, Edward Gomez, renewing his appeal for the release of local journalist Ebrima “Chief” Manneh. Manneh disappeared more than five years ago after security agents seized him at the offices of his newspaper, the Daily Observer.
Gambia VP touts tourism, downplays human rights issues
The Gambia has an image problem: Dubbed the “Smiling Coast of Africa,” it is a tourist destination, but its government has one of the region’s worst records of human rights abuses. On Tuesday, at an African tourism promotion event in New York City, Gambian Vice-President Isatou Njie-Saidy headed a delegation working toward improving the negative…
Jammeh to news media: I set limits on press freedom
Last week, Gambian President Yahya Jammeh participated in a rare meeting with select members of the West African nation’s press corps. Jammeh spoke in favor of access to public information. He announced that he would allow The Standard newspaper to resume publication, five months after the National Intelligence Agency forced its editor, Sheriff Bojang, to…
Deyda Hydara, a friend and colleague murdered in impunity
I can still vividly recall how the news of Deyda Hydara’s killing was relayed to me on the morning of December 17, 2004, after I returned from a trip to Zambia the previous night. Very early that morning, I called his childhood friend and partner at The Point, Pap Saine, who told me: “They shot…
Jammeh ‘award’ coverage reflects chill in Gambian press
“President Jammeh bags 4 awards,” trumpeted a September 17 headline of the Daily Observer, a pro-government newspaper in the Gambia, a West African nation whose idyllic façade as “the smiling coast of Africa” is maintained in part by President Yahyah Jammeh’s brutal repression of the independent press.
On Gambia’s Freedom Day, CPJ joins call for human rights
Thursday was Freedom Day in the Gambia, an annual holiday unique to the West African nation marking President Yahyah Jammeh’s seizure of power in a 1994 coup. As the president used the occasion to declare a crusade against drugs and corruption, his rhetoric was undercut by the repression of the independent press under his administration.
Gambia’s ‘Smiling Coast’ hides local media’s grimace
Who would not like to enjoy luxurious beach resorts and quaint fishing villages on the “Smiling Coast of Africa”? This is the pitch that the Gambian government made to participants of an international tourism conference last week. In fact, behind the idyllic facade of a tropical paradise wedged on Africa’s western Atlantic coast is the…
Durbin, Senate colleagues press for Manneh’s release
For more than two years, U.S. Sen. Richard J. Durbin and a group of Senate colleagues have been pressing for the release of Gambian journalist “Chief” Ebrima Manneh, left. In July 2006, security agents arrested Manneh at his workplace at the Daily Observer and have since held him incommunicado and without charge. On Thursday, Durbin…
Newly freed, Gambian columnist describes jail
On an ordinary Friday, Sarata Jabbi-Dibba, a reporter in the West African nation of Gambia, publishes her weekly column on women’s issues, “She She She,” in the only independent daily newspaper here, The Point. Last Friday however, Dibba was herself a newsmaker—after recovering her freedom.
Only the Gambian president has press freedom
On July 22, Gambian President Yahya Jammeh once again went after journalists in an interview on the country’s only state-run television station. The president made a thinly veiled threat toward six independent journalists currently facing “seditious publication” and “criminal defamation” charges in the country: “So they think they can hide behind so-called press freedom and…