Subject: Article in New African March 2003
Attention: Mr Abdoulie Sey and the editor Mr Baffour Ankomah
Woe to the hypocrites and woe to those who develop their selfish tendency !
My life is in danger because of your negative article “Battle for the beaches” with my photo. You have published my photo in your article to have more publicity and your financial interest.
Mr Abdoulie Sey and Mr Baffour Ankomah, who gave you the authority to do this horrible thing to me, to lie about me?
The libeling article in New African magazine is threatening my life and made me ashamed because I am accused of being a liar which I am not. I am an elderly man, living in honesty and have so much responsibility for myself, my family and the country I come from, the Gambia, and also in the entire world as a good human being. It is damaging my respect and my moral for my future plans.
I am not a free man anymore, as I used to be, walking freely in the beach and in the streets of Banjul or being anywhere in the Gambia without feeling that something bad can happen to me.
I was used to promote Badala Park Hotel without my permission with my photo appearing in the Gambia Experience catalogue for nearly 7 years. You had copied my photo from page 25 in issue Nov 2000-Oct 2001 in that catalogue and used it in your magazine New African on page 32 in issue March 2003 and changed my image.
You have made it more worse by publishing my photo and lie about me, saying that I am a musician and the bad habit of the beach boys has spoilt my business, which I have never said. I was never interviewed by Mr Abdoulie Sey and I do not know him. We have never met. This article has disgraced my image and I have been accused as a liar by the bumsters and also been threatened to death by them.
I am not a musician, my business was never spoilt by any bumster. I am a businessman, art glazier, building carpenter, welder and black smith, well known in Scandinavia, Europe, Saudi Arabia and West Africa.
Some friends in Gothenburg had seen the article and by coincidence I was contacting them to have the constitution of the Gambian organization in Gothenburg. Then they told me about the published article and sent me a copy in black/white. I was very chocked to see it and contacted the New African office in London which sent me the original magazine in my address in Reading – where I was living temporarily.
When I saw the article I contacted the editor of New African magazine Mr Baffour Ankomah by email on 27 April 2003. I called him from Reading, UK, and he told me that it was the Minister of Tourism Mr Yankuba Touray who gave him the authority to publish the article with my photo. The only thing the magazine could do was to apologize and his boss was on holiday and he was going to discuss the matter with him when he had returned to work. Since then I have not heard anything and I am still suffering till today. Even if you have published an apology you should have sent me an issue of that magazine. Can you tell me how I can apologize to all the beach boys who have harassed me? Even to their friends, families and the tourists who support them and those who read the magazine?
I called Mr Yankubah Touray and he denied that he had given any authorization. He said he did not know Mr Baffour Ankomah and they never met. After I heard that Mr Yankubah Touray had a problem with the beach boys in the beach of Senegambia Hotel when he was doing some sport in the beach. If this is true or not I do not know.
Mr Yankubah Touray knows me since I met him with my wife and a delegation from Sweden in January 2000 about a fishing project.
Of course I understand there were bad incidents also between the tourists and the bumsters. Most of the bumsters in the Gambia are not Gambians but from the sub-region. They are hungry dogs with no mercy to anyone not even to Gambians. The bad behaviour of some people would not stop tourism, because tourism is a national phenomenon where people move from point A to point B everywhere in the world.
In the bumster side they might be accused for being pickpockets, gangsters, rapers, beggars.
Some of them are very friendly and know some tourists for decades and take care of tourists as their own family.
In the tourist side they might be accused for pedofil, rapers, homosexuals, pretend to have lost their property to gain insurance benefit, spreading AIDS, scandalizing the Gambia as a sex market whilst they are developing prostitution with their immoral behaviour, establishing NGO for the benefit of their own pockets, drug trafficking and human trafficking.
Some tourists are coming frequently to enjoy the holiday with their families for decades and buy African carving, batiks etc. even compound to build hotel, restaurants, private homes, invest in taxi vehicles, involve in fishing and contribute to the national economy.
There are good sides and bad sides of both bumsters and tourists.
I am not for sale and should not be treated as a civilized slave. No one should underestimate me because of my low profile and take advantage to violate my democratic human right because I am Ebrima Lamin George MamBeram.
I am waiting for an answer from the editor Mr Baffour Ankomah and journalist Mr Abdoulie Sey.
Ebrima Lamin George
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