Katim:

From my perspective this is great news.  Keep up the struggle and your
efforts.

Abdoulaye

No justice, no peace!

> "Katim S. Touray" wrote:
>
> 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

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