GAMBIA/MANNEH - DETAINED JOURNALIST GETS HELP FROM SENATE  APPROPRIATORS!!!

Gambia Government Risked Losing Future Assistance From The US

November 18, 2009 - DETAINED JOURNALIST GETS HELP FROM SENATE APPROPRIATORS:

“Although seemingly not unprecedented, the Senate Appropriations Committee took an unusual step to aid a missing Gambian journalist — mentioning him by name in the report accompanying the fiscal 2010 State-Foreign Operations bill,” said a statement sent to this paper by the Washington based Rights Organization called Freedom Now.

According to Freedom Now,  Senate appropriators said that the treatment of journalists, especially of Ebrima Manneh, “will be considered . . . in assessing continued United States assistance for The Gambia.”

The Senate Appropriations Committee also said it noted with “concern the harassment of journalists and deterioration of press freedom in The Gambia,” particularly the three-year “incommunicado detention” of Manneh, a reporter for the Daily Observer newspaper.

Less than half the size of the state of Maryland, the West African nation of Gambia has seen its president, Yahya Jammeh, take “far-reaching steps to maintain power” since a failed coup in March 2006, according to the State Department.  The fiscal 2010 State-Foreign Operations legislation hasn’t progressed as far as the Senate floor, but Manneh’s case is getting attention elsewhere. The United Nations’ Working Group on Arbitrary Detention recently called for Manneh’s release, according to Freedom Now, a nonprofit group dedicated to prisoners of conscience, and the law firm of Hogan & Hartson, which is working with Freedom Now to aid Manneh.

The mention of Manneh’s situation was added to the bill at the request of Majority Whip Durbin, who is a member of Senate State-Foreign Operations  Appropriations. In the Freedom Now release, Durbin said the decision from the U.N. panel “is more than a powerful rebuke of the Gambia government; it is a warning to all regimes holding political prisoners without cause.” Another international body, the Economic Community Of West African States, in 2008 called for Manneh’s release, according to the U.S. State Department. The community’s court declared his continued detention illegal and ordered the government to pay compensation of $100,000 to Manneh’s family, a fine specified in dollars. The nonprofit human rights group Amnesty International has identified Manneh as a priority case. There are conflicting reports about his 2006 arrest, which may have stemmed from a disagreement with an editor, who also is a close ally of the president, Amnesty has said. Manneh also may have been planning to print a report critical of his government, Amnesty International has said.