In his interview with Kebba Dibba published over the publicly owned GRTS television on the eve of

July 22, President Jammeh dwelt into the issue of freedom of expression in The Gambia. He also

made reference to an on going trial of journalists accused of sedition and defamation. In this edition,

we will publish his comments on the disappearance of Chief Ebrima Manneh verbatim.

What hurts me most to be quite honest is this phenomenon of illegal migration. Am not a tribalist but I

know there are tribes because I believe in creation? Tribe is just a culture and norm. But when you

look at the statistics of people that are being deported at any given time, 98% of them are Mandinkas

.When these people leave, they don’t tell government. Government is not aware. And if they come

out that they end up somewhere, then they come and say this person has disappeared, Yahya

Jammeh has killed him. But look from 1994 to date, 99% of those people who are deported are illegal

immigrants or who were voluntarily repatriated by the IOM. 98% are all Mandinkos. Today they took

us to court, West African court, and ECOWAS court for Ebrima Chief Manneh. All the people they

said have disappeared are all Mandinkas. People who have vowed to overthrow my government. If I

have to kill people, those are the people I should kill but they are in prison. But why would I kill a

journalist like Manneh who was in fact the observer correspondent in my office. You understand the

reason why they take him now, you see if you commit an offence as a so called journalist, you take it

to court because they want to make sure that they use it and when they criticize you and some

people take advantage of that and where they failed to have visa they leave and then they go out

there, they end up in the sea. They said oh because is a journalist, they said Yahya Jammeh killed

him. Remember the case of Foday Makalo, they said we killed him. Foday Makalo was employed by

us. He did a lot of things wrong and went to Dakar with our Gambian vehicle. When the vehicle was

retrieved what they said, oh they killed him only for him to surface later in Spain. People have to

understand that this country belongs to all of us and I am not expecting everybody to like me. If you

dislike me I don’t care but don’t try to create a negative image of the country because that negative

image also, if you think is going to affect Yahya Jammeh, you are making a great mistake. It is going

to affect all the people in this country. So why is it that all the people they said has been killed by the

government are Mandinkas? When 99% of all these illegal migrants are all Mandinkas. That’s the

reality. Go to immigration or go to anywhere or in fact look at the IOM report of voluntary repatriated

Gambians. They have a report. You look at that list. You go to immigration and find out from 1994 to

date, all the people that have been deported, 98% are Mandinkas. So if they want to leave, am not

preventing anybody from leaving but let them be honest enough to stay or say we want to leave. But

to say, oh! this man has disappeared so Yahya Jammeh killed him so that anybody who wants to

leave will have a visa. But look at all the people we are wrongly been accused of disappearing, there

is somebody they called Kanyiba Kanyi I don’t know. They said he was arrested and is in custody

somewhere or he has been killed. When we arrest people, we take them to court. Ousainou Darboe

killed somebody, we took him to court, unfortunately western pressure on the judges, the case

dragged on for a long time and it ended up still not being punished and he has been acquitted and

discharged. Did we kill him? No! There are people sentenced to death, if they are justified why don’t

we kill them. And one should always ask yourself why is it that oh Yahya Jammeh is always accused

of killing Mandinkas? What do I have against the Mandinkas when some of our strongest militants