A few weeks after Deyda Hydara's murder information reaching us all indicate that a coaltion of opposition parties has been formed. While that is a culmination of a long process, that it it is crowned now is of great historic significance.  It is time all progressive forces in the land joined hands and minds to launch a relentless push to sweep out of power a regime that remains callously reticent while insensate arsonists and killers continue rampaging our dark and murky streets. 

Sidibeh

A Lament for Deyda 

The Independent (Banjul) 
COLUMN
January 10, 2005 
Posted to the web January 10, 2005 

By Cherno Baba Jallow
Banjul 

"Yes, a bullet comes with a frightening speed, pierces your skin, enters and explodes in your body's horizontal extremity. Small boys and girls endured it, so why not us? We are no better than them. As for the fire, it is true that it consumes you in a horrible manner. But you land in Heaven. So what?" 

--- Deyda Hydara, April 15, 2000. 

"Men," said the English essayist Francis Bacon, "fear death as children fear to go in the dark " Death, especially when exacted gruesomely, is an eventuality that any man is or ought to be panicky about. For one to think long and hard about death, accompanied by bouts of excruciating pain like one inflicted by gunfire, is in itself a test of human endurance, an enormity of imaginative meditation. You could be forgiven for exulting in Deyda's apparent fearlessness in the face of death, contrary to Bacon's assertion. And you could be faulted for not even trying to comprehend the situational reality behind a man's declared state of mental anticipation of macabre death. 

In 2000, Deyda's journalistic crusade against the killings of the student protesters brought his newspaper international fame. Writing on the interactive website Gambia-L, at the time, one Modou Sanyang wrote: "As we condemn biased reporting, so we must commend journalists who remain true to their calling even under pressure. I am proud of The Point " Deyda, in his editorials, had put pressure on the government to account for the atrocities of its own security agents: "If the government, through its agents fail to protect lives, properties and maintain peace and security at one point in time, it must be courageous enough to accept that it is unable to govern; thus it must assume full responsibility for any situation that arises." The paper called for a number of resignations including the Vice President Isatou Njie Saidy and then Interior Secretary Ousman Badjie. 

But The Point also reached the brink of confrontation with the government. It put relentless pressure on the authorities and in so doing; the paper also came under a welter of diatribe from government sympathizers. Deyda reported being called "stupid" and "crazy". He was merely asking for public accountability. A government through its own security agents had failed to protect innocent lives; in fact its forces killed scores of harmless schoolchildren. This was a crime most foul. 

Deyda must have been apoplectic with fury. He editorialized: " if this right approach was taken, there wouldn't have been any deaths. 

International conventions and humanitarian law forbid security forces entering shelters like the Red Cross premises, so why kill Barrow in that premises? What was the use of all the resources put to organizing seminars on humanitarian law for our security forces?" 

His editorials throughout this period were meant not only to rebuke the government for its dereliction of duty, but also to shame the nation's character into action. "Our hearts bled the whole of Monday evening and continue to bleed even now as we visualize, after we were told the picture at the morgue of the bodies laid there, with their little faces covered, their school socks and shoes on." 

Deyda was a journalist with the ideals of an independent press and of free speech encysted at his heart. He understood the necessities of unrestrained information flow and its potent palpability on communities and those who live in them. Societies are shaped by news events as much as they shape those events. So societies that constrict freedom of communication are bound to produce an uninformed citizenry, and an uninformed citizenry will produce unenlightened leaders. Deyda, in his perceptive understanding of and regard for public awareness, had an acute sense of the intellectual pathologies inherent in a society starved of informational dissemination. 

During a teleconference with a prominent American journalist in the early 1990s, Deyda suggested the American explain the Freedom of Information Act and the First Amendment to the US constitution to the largely inexperienced, seated Gambian journalists. He was, in effect, trying to have us understand the importance of information and why it is unhealthy for government to suppress open channels of communication. The First Amendment to the US constitution gives immense fillip to the freedom of speech and of the press in the United States. The observance of the rule of law and the applicability of judicial discretion give journalists and their institutions enough cover to carry out their functions. 

Not in Africa. Authoritarian leadership still coarsens the political landscape to the extent of calamity for both journalists and those who defend them in the courts. When Deyda and Pap Saine visited me after my first detention at the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), they encouraged me to be strong and resilient, but also to be mindful of the dangers ahead. Deyda suggested precautionary writing; some risks weren't worth taking, he seemed to reason. I must confess: I didn't like this suggestion. My youthful stubbornness had somewhat blinded me to a piece of sagacious advice. Perhaps, Deyda was trying to scare me away from my false sense of unflappability. 

In Africa, journalists must learn to develop survival instincts. 

Whatever you do, try to survive to the next day to be a source of news for your community. Sometimes, journalists must operate between cowardice and bravery to be able to carry out their work; they do not have the luxury of personal liberty at the disposal of their western counterparts. Death and physical harm usually await African journalists. 

For example, the investigative Nigerian editor, Dele Giwa, was parcel-bombed, his body reduced to shards. The Malawian journalist, Mwakpathira Mhango and eight of his family were also killed by a parcel bomb. 

In the West, a strong judiciary coupled with strong civic institutions, make the watchdog role of the press less difficult compared to that of the African press. The flagrant assault on civil society in Africa gives journalists the double task of reporting events and also acting as defenders of the truth and of public integrity. In doing both, they become unfortunate victims of political persecution. Deyda was well aware of the important role of the journalist especially in Africa. As journalists, he wrote, "we're obliged to place our responsibility to the people above and beyond loyalty to anything else." 

Yet, he paid the ultimate price of death. His killers must be found and condign punishment handed out to them for their action is both a scourge and a threat to national survival. But in death, Deyda should take comfort in the fact that he was able to contribute, with a deep sense of patriotic duty, to the critical consciousness of his nation. Through his newspaper, which started from humble beginnings, he was able to help his people maximize their reading habits, whet their intellectual appetites, chronicle their hopes and suffering and give them reasons to agitate for better governance. 

The symbiotic relationship between the African journalist and the people, especially since the continent's independence from colonial rule, has long been one of unflinching loyalty. The people have always depended on the press as their last sanctuary of hope against tyrannical regimes and vindictive, powerful leaders. And the press has also relied on the countenance of the people to thrive in hostile political environments. Deyda's death brought international revulsion. People in Mali and Senegal protested his murder. And Gambians recoiled in horror at the unprecedented nature of a death of one of their proudly own. For his belief in and fight for press freedom, Deyda is entitled, with unquestionable justification, to an important place in Gambian history. 

Years hence, chroniclers of Gambian society will accord him this fitting place. 

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