Alagi Yorro, well done. Your May 4th, World Press
Freedom Day presentation in New York was great and it
is impossible for any intelligent human being to have
listen or read your catalog of terror events  melted
on The Gambia media without wanting to do all he/she
possibly can do to defeat president Jammeh a criminal
in the highest office. Great!

Saihou





  

--- panderry mbai <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>                                   Gambia’s fledging
> media is learning how to emerge from crippling
> harassment-Yorro Jallow
>   World Press Freedom Day
>   “Freedom of the Press in the Gambia”
>   A  lecture by Alagi Jallow
>   May 4, 2006
>   Intro: I want to thank Amnesty International for
> inviting me to speak about the importance of press
> freedoms. 
>   I would like to answer ‘What happens to a society
> that lacks freedom of press?’ in my talk with you
> today. I come from the Gambia, a small country in
> West Africa that gained its independence from the
> British in 1965. It has been known in the past as
> the ‘smiling coast’—a place of sunshine, welcome and
> real generosity of spirit. With decolonization, it
> became the home of the African Commission on Human
> and People’s Rights, and it was a bastion of
> democracy in a continent beset by military
> take-overs and depotic regimes.
>   
>   Independent Managing Editor
>   Alagi Yorro Jallow, addresses Amnesty
>   forum in New York
>   All this changed in July 1994, when a group of
> junior army officers overthrew the 30-year long
> government of Sir Dawda K. Jawara. They installed
> themselves first as military overlords, and in 1996,
> they rigged the constitution and went on to fix the
> presidential elections in favor of their contender,
> Yahya Jammeh who had transformed himself into a
> civilian candidate—one who based his candidacy on a
> platform of ridding the country of corruption,
> transparency and decency, and on probity in all
> matters of governance.
>   I will use the example of the Gambia to try to
> answer the question ‘What happens to a society that
> lacks freedom of the press?’ My hope is that through
> this discussion you will have not only a better
> understanding of what it means to work as journalist
> under pressure in the Gambia, but also the
> importance of continuing to defend media freedom and
> individual journalists worldwide. 
>   1998 Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen said that the
> “absence of a free press and the suppression of
> people’s ability to speak to and to communicate with
> each other directly impoverishes human freedom and
> impairs development.” What this means is that if
> press freedoms are taken away, then all of society
> suffers and development stagnates. 
>   I am sure you have heard and read about stories of
> journalists being detained arbitrarily, violently
> attacked and even assassinated. According to the
> Committee to Protect Journalists, already 12
> journalists have been confirmed killed in 2006
> because of their work. 
>   These stories are extraordinary and receive
> widespread media attention, however, today, the
> principal weapon is not arbitrary detention and
> violent physical attacks on journalists and their
> press houses. More and more we are seeing that
> through the manipulated justice system, the courts
> are coerced into providing the gags and handcuffs.
> Undoubtedly hundreds of journalists have been
> charged, tried and convicted – while unjust, this
> approach to stifle dissent does not attract as much
> attention as violence and can be equally effective.
>   The emergence of independent, privately owned
> newspapers in the past decade is one of the surest
> indications of the movement toward democratization
> in West Africa. This form of media pluralism,
> however, exists in a number of countries against a
> backdrop of incessant demands and challenges. The
> 1990’s were boom years for media development in West
> Africa. Newspapers literally covered city streets
> and capitals. 
>   Radio stations filled the airwaves across the
> sub-region where Gambians once had to make do with
> two radio stations [one state owned, one private].
> Two decades into the Gambia’s independence, the
> airwaves in Gambia have witnessed a steady rise in
> the number of stations and listeners. During this
> time it appeared that the government monopoly of the
> mass media had been irrevocably shattered, leaving
> an increasingly inquiring audience with a variety of
> choices for information. This progressive trend in
> the mass media pluralism and freedom was among the
> most visible and remarkable victories in the nascent
> democratic strivings of the people of the region. 
>   Almost a decade into the continent-wide
> democratization process, independent journalism has
> emerged as a powerful force capable of rooting out
> entrenched dictatorships and educating the masses
> about the responsibilities of elected governments.
> The media in Africa has made a tremendous effort to
> defend democratic gains and to expand the bounds of
> freedom by trying to force accountability from
> officials and political institutions. However,
> unlike civil society and media, the leadership has
> not “democratized” at an equal pace and criticism by
> newspapers and other media sources are not taken
> lately. Consequently, some African leaders across
> the continent have devised new ways to deal with
> journalists who refuse to be silenced. The
> independent media has become vulnerable to potential
> cases for libel suits, seditious charges, contempt
> charges, exorbitant fines, and most frequently in
> prison. 
>   After the coup in 1994, attacks on news
> organizations started almost immediately in the
> Gambia. There were raids on the independent press
> and journalists critical of the regime were subject
> to harassment and deportation. Despite the crackdown
> and the narrowing of the space for freedom of
> expression, I and Baba Galleh Jallow started The
> Independent, a bi-weekly newspaper which hit
> newsstand in July 1999. It soon became the fastest
> growing newspaper in terms of readership and
> popularity. With its Monday and Friday editions,
> circulation grew to 10,000 with an estimated
> readerhip of more than 30,000. 
>   Less than a month after The Independent was
> launched, the National Intelligence Agency, or NIA,
> raided its offices and many journalists were
> arrested and detained. Authorities claimed that the
> paper had not fulfilled all of its obligations to
> operate legally. These charges came despite the fact
> that the newspaper had been given permissions from
> the government to open. For two weeks, the paper
> ceased publication. Once it began again, harassment
> and intimidation continued with unrestrained
> regularity. I was arrested and detained as the
> authorities attempted to investigate the paper’s
> source of funding. Even female typesetters were
> taken for questioning at the NIA headquarters in
> Banjul.
>   In July 2000, one off my senior staff was arrested
> and detained by the NIA after I published an article
> about a hunger strike at the Central Prison. we were
> asked to reveal our sources and we refused.
> Eventually we were released on bail. In August,
> however, I was arrested again and this time placed
> in solitary confinement where I was subjected to
> physical and mental harassment and psychological
> torture. Officers forced me to strip naked and I was
> kept in the empty cell. Mosquitoes were everywhere
> and the floor was damp with urine. Many of the
> prisoners in jail were sick,and I contracted
> pneumonia and malaria as a result of the
> confinement. During this time, I was held
> incommunicado and was not allowed to talk to anyone,
> including my family or a lawyer. 
>   A month later I was arrested again when The
> Independent published a story with news that the
> vice president had remarried. The government was
> embarrassed by the story because it was customary
> for a person to wait one year before remarrying
> after his or her spouse dies. Hardly a week passed
> during this time without staff members being
> harassed by the NIA authorities or other people
> identify with the ruling regime.
>   In October 2003, The Independent’s premises were
> set on fire for the first time, and the newsroom was
> partly destroyed. A security guard was attacked and
> hit with an iron bar. I began receiving death
> threats. By January of 2004, the situation had
> deteriorated even more, when I received a letter
> signed by a group called the “Green Boys”
> threatening to kill me and destroy my newspaper
> because of our reporting. Soon the printing press
> was burned. One source told the National Assembly
> that two officers of the National Guard were among
> those who attacked The Independent, yet no
> investigation of this crime has been undertaken.
>   When it began in 1999, the Independent had 25
> staffers and freelancers. Today it has only eleven
> staff. After enduring years of harassment and real
> threats, the paper’s senior reporters and support
> staff, fearing their own safety, left the paper, and
> many have been compelled to leave the country,
> seeking political asylum abroad.
>   Today, Gambia’s fledging media is learning how to
> emerge from crippling harassment. President Jamey’s
> hostility towards journalists opened the doors for
> Parliament to find ways and means to muzzle the
> press. The National Media Commission was enacted
> which serves to undermine and eventually denigrate
> the workings of the media. The composition of such a
> Commission makes little or no room for a fair degree
> of media representation, while some of the
> provisions reduce journalists to mere apologists of
> established order. 
>   The Gambia Press Union and my friend Deyda Hydara,
> editor of the newspaper the Point, felt that this
> was unjust and that it was inimical to a free press.
> We hired a lawyer who helped us contest this
> legislation in a lawsuit before the Supreme Court of
> the Gambia. Two hearings were held and it was
> apparent that the government was on the verge of
> losing the case. To avoid such an upset, the
> government 
=== message truncated ===


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