Hi folks,

I have some good news to share.  Some people might think it bad news, depending on their perspective, and where they stand on recent developments in The Gambia.

This morning (Sunday, April 16), I attended a talk on the Death Penalty given by US Senator Russell Feingold, a Democrat from Wisconsin.  Sen. Feingold is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the Ranking Member of that Committee's Africa Sub-Committee:

    http://www.senate.gov/~foreign/subcommittees.html#africanaffairs

As it happens, I interviewed him this past January on my call-in program "A Public Affair" (APA) which I have been a volunteer host and producer of for over two years now on our community radio station, WORT FM:

    http://www.netphoria.com/wort

My program with Sen. Feingold focused on his 10-nation tour of Africa, along with the US Ambassador to the United Nations, Richard Holbrooke.  The Senator is particularly interested in African affairs in general, and human rights issues in particular.  For this reason, I thought his presentation today would be a great opportunity for me to meet him in person, and talk to him about last weeks killings in The Gambia, and what we are trying to do about it.

As you can imagine, there were a few people who wanted to talk to the Senator after his presentation, but I was able to have a few minutes with him.  I introduced myself to him, and mentioned my interview with him on APA.  We talked briefly about recent developments in Africa, thus paving the way for me to introduce the topic of last weeks killings back home.  I gave him a brief overview of the killings, and events that lead to them, in addition to a synopsis of other issues relevant to assessing the Jammeh government.  I told him that Gambians all over the world are mobilizing and responding to last weeks senseless killings and that we will be needing help from people like him.

The Sen. asked me to talk some more to his aide (who was present) with a view toward scheduling a meeting with his office to discuss matters more.  I gave his aide a little more detailed overview of the issues I raised with the Senator, and told him that I will be sending him more details by e-mail to bring him abreast of developments in The Gambia.  I also told him that I will include the URL to the Gambia-L archives in the e-mail that I will be sending him for him to be able to follow the debate, and get a sense of the feeling of outrage that many of us have expressed.

Senator Feingold's aide told me that he will forward the e-mail I send him to the person responsible for African affairs at the Senator's Washington, DC office.  We should hopefully be able to schedule an interview with the official in DC, and at that point, we'll need to have some people on the ground in DC to go meet with officials at Senator Feingold's Office.  Off the top of my head, I'm thinking of Karamba Touray and Latjor Ndow (since they are in the vicinity) but this by no means implies that we should not consider other people to go speak on our behalf.  So this might be a good time to start thinking about people we should talk to about going to talk to Senator Feingold's office.

Still on the issue of reaching out to different organizations and officials to solicit their support and help, I'd like to say that I would also be contacting Sunni Khalid, the Communication's Director of the National Summit on Africa.  They have been working very hard at bringing Africa to the forefront in the US national agenda, and recently concluded a highly successful National Summit on Africa.  I believe Dr. Amadou Janneh was a member of the Tennessee delegation, and can probably tell you more about what transpired at the Summit.  For your information, you can visit their Web site at: http://www.africasummit.org/

Again, as luck would have it, I interviewed Sunni just about a few weeks ago on my APA program on WORT, and we talked about the National Summit on Africa, and the recommendations and plan of action that came out of it.  I will be sending Sunni an e-mail to solicit their help ensuring that the Jammeh government is brought to an end, as peacefully, and as soon as possible.  The e-mail I'll be sending Sunni would be along the lines of the one I'll be sending Senator Feingold's office, but would place a special emphasis that the gross acts of violence and corruption committed, or alleged to have been committed by the Jammeh government will make it incredibly difficult for them to work toward increasing Africa's credibility in the eyes of American citizens.  Simply put, unless the likes of President Jammeh stop digging the hole that the National Summit on Africa, and similar organizations are trying to dig us out of, we'll never get out of the hole.

In regards preparing writing e-mail messages to Sen. Feingold's office, and to Sunni Khalid, I would appreciate it if people can help with information that can be included in the e-mails.  In particular, I would like the e-mails to be formatted as follows:

    1.  Background  - a brief overview of The Gambia, and short history of the Jammeh government
    2.  Human Rights under the Jammeh government (the US State Depts. report would come in handy here)
    3.  Economic Management (or mis-management; take your pick) under Jammeh's government - I am especially interested in the current state of the Gambian economy compared to when Jammeh came to power.  What's our balance of payments situation, our currencies exchange rate, inflation, unemployment figures, etc.  A list of key economic indicators would be really helpful
    4.  Unresolved allegations of corruption against the Jammeh government:  The money from Taiwan, what happened to the money that recovered from the Ebou Jallow thing, and returned to the government?; the Nigeria oil deal, and any others.
    5.  A list of all incidents that have resulted in loss of life during Jammeh's rule, the number of people killed, as well as the number of people killed in each incident, the government's explanation, and other views different from the government's.
    6.  A list of actions requested from parties interested in helping bring a peaceful end to the Jammeh government.  I would suggest the following:
    a.  That all official financial assistance to The Gambia be suspended, until all pending allegations of corruption are resolved
    b.  All those detained in the aftermath of the student riots, and killings, and indeed any political prisoners the government may hold in prison be immediately released, or brought to court
    c.  Help isolate the Jammeh government by refusing it's top-ranking officials an audience unless genuine efforts are made to address the issues above, or unless the meeting is for the purpose of discussing the above issues

The above are off the top of my head, and I'm sure many of you will have others you can add to it, or would like to improve it some more.  I should also say that we can use the format above as a template for developing the freegambia.org Web site, or whatever site we finally agree on.  In this regard, Dr. Amadou Janneh and others have volunteered to help with developing content for the site, and I would like to suggest that all those interested in helping pick a topic from the list above and do some research on it.

Also, could you indicate whether you would like to lead research on the topic, in the event more than 1 person volunteers to research a topic.  And I cannot emphasize the importance of getting our facts straight.  We cannot afford to send e-mails with factual errors, and conjecture to people we want to help.  No matter how upset you are with the Jammeh government, please, please, let's stick to the facts.

For your information, I would like send out the e-mails by Friday, April 21.  Please let me know if that's an unrealistic target given the work that might need to be done to research the facts.  And by the way, I would like to appeal to Gambian newspapers to dig into their archives for information that might be helpful if included in the e-mails I'll be sending out.

May I also mention that I would like forward the Press Release put out by the Gambia Press Union (GPU), and forwarded to the list by Abdul Aziz Drammeh, to my Freelance Journalists mailing list hosted at Topica:

    http://www.topica.com/lists/freelance-journalists/

I have been running the list for over 2 years now, and it presently has about 440 subscribers.  I'd appreciate it if someone can send me a contact e-mail address for the GPU so I can included in my forwarded message to the Freelance Journalists list.

Please feel free to write to me directly at [log in to unmask] if you have any questions, or need any more information.  Needless to say, there are other issues such as getting a list of different Gambian organizations working on human rights and democracy issues, and the like.  Would someone volunteer to collect a list of organizations and their contacts so we can decide on how best to proceed with the business of an umbrella organization to work with?

I guess that's about it.  Best wishes.

Katim