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The Daily Observer Founder Kenneth Y Best's statement to the International Press Institute
Dear Sasu:
I wish to thank you and Bethel sincerely for this powerful statement on the Gambian parliament's terrible Act against press freedom and democracy in that country. I think the statement says it all.
The only thing, if any, that I would add is my shock and dismay to see that Nana Grey Johnson, himself one of the most educated and long-serving Gambian journalists, would bring himself to the depraved and despicable position of aligning himself, as Information Minister, with such a tyrannical regime as Yahya Jammeh's. It is hard to understand how Mr. Johnson, who in the late 1980s and early 1990s ran an independent news magazine in The Gambia, could agree to serve such a tyrannical regime that kills journalists like himself and other democracy and human rights activists. Does Johnson not know that when Jammeh is through with him (Nana), he, too, will get the boot and his own life will be in danger? That is how despots behave. Nana should know that.
I add my voice to those of the International Press Institute and all press freedom an democracy loving institutions and individuals in appealing to the Gambian parliament to swiftly repeal this horrible Act, in the interest of democracy, press freedom and good governance in The Gambia. But can they do it, when Gambia is a one-party state in which even the recognized opposition is at also risk?
Finally, I urge the Gambian journalists and human rights and democracy activists, in The Gambia and in the Gambian Diaspora, to continue the struggle for the restoration of a free and independent press and democracy in their beloved country and not relent until final victory is won!
Kenneth Y. Best, Founder and former Publisher, The Gambian Daily
Observer and Founder and Publisher, the Liberian Daily Observer
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