"The first to be targeted were the reporters from Sierra Leone and Liberia," Lamin tells me. "Having lived through military takeovers in their own countries, they were very critical when the army seized power here. So the new regime made sure they were either silenced or deported." That was in 1994. Since then, the conditions under which independent journalists work in the Gambia has got worse, not better.

From the beginning, the clique of junior officers who took control in July 1994, under the name of the Armed Forces Provisional Ruling Council (AFPRC), were conscious of their narrow base of popular support, and thus were sensitive to any public discussion which cast them in a bad light, particularly to critical voices from the independent media. Although they transformed themselves into a civilian government through controversial elections in 1996, the new incarnation of the military government, the Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction (APRC) continued to rule with the same disposition towards critics.

In that regard, public life in the Gambia came to assume something of the character of a low-budget autocracy. Most of the time, normal life went on peacefully, with both political opposition and independent media operating relatively freely. Gambia remains far from a Zimbabwe-style totalitarian state and the European tourists who crowd beaches around Banjul every year would be hard-pushed to detect anything amiss. For journalists who crossed a certain line, however, the regime's gloves came off.

Particularly unwelcome were personal attacks on regime members, coverage of high-level scandals, denunciations of official policy or especially favourable coverage of opposition parties. Those crossing the boundaries could expect to be subjected to measures ranging from formal arrest and interview by the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) to threatening notes of intimidation from a secretive loyalist militia calling itself the 'Green Boys'. Meanwhile a raft of legal measures laid down penalties including fines, suspension of licences to operate and imprisonment for hazily-defined infringements of the National Media Commission Act.

Although a number of newspapers and private radio stations suffered harassment and closure, one of the most regular targets has been the country's bi-weekly Independent newspaper. Since 2003, successive Independent editors have been repeatedly detained by the NIA, often beaten or tortured and eventually released. The newspaper's premises have been repeatedly attacked by arsonists and the paper has regularly been prevented from publishing. For Lamin (not his real name), his own turn came in 2004. First came a note from the Green Boys informing him they were "not happy" with his critical coverage of the tenth anniversary of the 1994 coup. Then at around 3am one morning, the window-frames of his home were forced open and petrol was poured in. Seconds later doors and furniture were alight. The fire was put out without casualties – his family was already living outside the country – but shortly after the incident, Lamin himself left the Gambia. He now works elsewhere in the region.

Journalists in danger

In time the growing number of such incidents began to attract the attention of the international media, of rights organisations, and eventually of more progressive-minded leaders within West Africa itself. Conscious of his government's dual reliance upon the goodwill of aid donors who already had reservations about his standards of governance, and on the tolerance of influential neighbours such as Nigeria and Senegal, whose democratised leaderships made no secret of their dislike for military strongmen, Gambian president Yahya Jammeh adjusted his tack accordingly. On 19 October 2004 the government announced its intention to revoke the unpopular and hard-to-implement National Media Commission Act.

But no sooner had this been accomplished, than it was replaced by a new and more effective piece of legislation. A new Criminal Code Amendment Bill proposed new punishments for libel – defined very broadly as publishing 'any defamatory matter concerning another person' – including a mandatory six months in prison without the option of a fine for a first offence (in late 2005 it was further raised to one year). At the same time the government ruled that the fee for registering a media organ with the country's regulator would be raised fivefold, to US$17,000, thus introducing a significant new financial bar to the independent media. Deyda Hydara, editor of the country's Point newspaper, correspondent for Association France Presse (AFP) and representative of Paris-based media rights organisation Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) was at the forefront of vocal protests about the new rules, with consequences which changed the playing field forever.

At around midnight on 16 December 2004, Hydara was dropping two colleagues at their homes in the capital Banjul, when his car was overtaken and flagged down by a taxi. On stopping, armed men got out of the taxi and opened fire, killing Hydara

But organisations based outside the country fared better: Reporters Sans Frontières asked the question which went right to the heart of the matter. It asked, in view of the "unacceptable treatment that press freedom has received in Gambia for several years", was the AU prepared to let its subsidiary rights body, the African Commission on Human and People's Rights (ACHPR) remain based in the Gambian capital? The point throws into question the whole issue of the AU's claims to credibility. While its predecessor Organisation of African Unity (OAU), widely reviled as a dictators' social club, was content to let the ACHPR wither on the vine as a purely symbolic gesture of interest in rights, the AU has from inception based its claims on a very different approach. The AU was conceived of as a progressive continental community based on rules, rights and shared values. Indeed, at the Banjul summit itself, assembled leaders assented to the creation of an AU rights court to be based in Tanzania. But in the event, the AU leaders left RSF's point unaddressed. Perhaps the hosts successfully lobbied to keep it off the agenda, or perhaps the people who matter decided to let it pass for fear of derailing the meeting's other business. Or maybe there were just too many others with their own reasons not to highlight abuses of freedoms of speech. Either way, the issue was left hanging in the air over the photo-opportunities and handshakes. With that opportunity missed, and elections growing closer by the day, the outlook is likely to continue deteriorating for Gambia's remaining independent media voices.