press releases & Protests

April 14, 2006

Fax letter to: 220-4201736

H E President Alhaji Dr Yahya A J J Jammeh
Republic of The Gambia
President’s Office
New Administration Building
Quadrangle, Banjul
The Gambia

Re: Detention of journalists in The Gambia

Your Excellency,

The World Press Freedom Committee wishes to support the protests contained in a letter to yourself dated April 5 from the London-based organization, Article 19, and the message to your Ambassador to the United Nations by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists about the arbitrary closure of the “Independent” newspaper and the detention of its General Manager Madi Ceesay and Editor-in-Chief Musa Saidykhan. The two men have been detained for several days on unspecified charges first by the police and then by the National Intelligence Agency.

The continued detention of these two men appears to be in contravention of criminal procedure laws in The Gambia which stipulate that detained persons must be brought before court in 72 hours. Their detention, too, follows the detention last October by NIA agents of Saidykhan who was harassed over an article on the unsolved December 2004 murder of prominent Gambian editor Deyda Hydara and other attacks on the media.

On December 16 journalists were prevented from gathering at the site of the murder of Hydara and police assaulted a reporter who was taking pictures at the site.

On October 24 police shut down the Gambian branch of Senegalese private radio station Sud FM “for inciting trouble” between Gambia and Senegal, according to then acting Gambian Information Minister Neneh Mcdoll-Gaye, over the ferry service over the Gambia River which forms the boundary between the two countries.

The Gambian government has also failed to solve a series of arson attacks on private media, including two against The Independent in 2003 and 2004.

The World Press Freedom Committee condemns these attacks on the media which transgress all accepted principles of media freedom and freedom of expression as contained in the human rights declarations of the United Nations and the African Union. We point out, too, that these repressive acts are a total contradiction of the presence in Banjul, your capital, of the headquarters of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. That organization’s Declaration of Principles of Freedom of Expression in Africa adopted only three short years ago are also contemptuously flouted by this conduct.

Our organization has in the past drawn attention to the outrageous anomaly of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights continuing to pursue its laudable principles in a country which clearly not only rejects them but actively perpetrates acts in contravention of them.

We believe the Commission should withdraw from your country and conduct its affairs elsewhere until the journalists have been released and the rule of law and media freedom have been restored by your government. A copy of this letter is being sent to the Commission and the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Sincerely,

E. Markham Bench
Executive Director