Gambian Journalists Being Arrested
By HEIDI VOGT
The Associated Press
Monday, July 31, 2006; 4:10 AM
BANJUL,
Gambia -- Scores of reporters jailed, some emerging with tales of
police beatings. Newspapers shuttered. A journalist forced into hiding.
Gambia
_ a sliver of a nation on the West African coast _ bills itself to
foreigners as a cheerful beach resort, but critics say the country
shelters a corrupt regime that is arresting reporters and closing down
papers to silence opponents ahead of September presidential elections.
The situation has deteriorated since Gambia hosted the
profile-raising African Union summit in late June, according to the New
York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. Since then, a reporter for
a pro-government paper has gone missing, a nascent publication has been
shut down after one issue and its Nigerian founder arrested, and a
reporter for a shuttered publication has gone into hiding, CPJ said.
"Gambia has become one of the worst places in Africa to be a journalist," said CPJ executive director Joel Simon.
Though
less than half of Gambia's 1.6 million people are literate and most of
the country's newspapers circulate only around 2,000 copies, the papers
have been some of the few entities to openly criticize President Yahya
Jammeh, who seized power in a 1994 coup and has stayed in power by
winning elections the opposition claimed were rigged.
Information Minister Neneh MacDouall said charges of a media crackdown were unfounded.
"We
have granted licenses to more newspapers and more private radio
stations than ever before," MacDouall said, explaining it was much
harder to get such approval before Jammeh came to power.
But Gambian journalists tell of unexplained arrests, increasing self-censorship and police beatings.
"We
are seen as enemies. You see it with the constant things that they do,
the repressive laws that they pass," said Sam Sarr, editor of the
opposition Foroyaa newspaper.
"We are always worried to write
about certain things _ things concerning human rights and security,"
said reporter Bubacarr Sowe.
Police closed the leading opposition
paper, The Independent, in March after it published an article that
incorrectly named a former interior minister among 23 people arrested
for plotting a coup attempt. The paper printed a front-page retraction
the next day, but the story ran up against a harsh new law that
mandates prison sentences of at least six months for printing
falsehoods.
Four days after the article ran, police stormed the
newspaper's offices, arresting everyone in the building and barring the
doors, said Madi Ceesay, the paper's general manager and president of
the Gambia Press Union.
The Independent hasn't published since.
The reporter who wrote
the article _ Lamin Fatty _ said he was jailed for 63 days before being
charged and released on bail. Fatty appeared in court Thursday, and
after several hours of testimony from prosecution witnesses the hearing
was adjourned until Aug. 3.
It's against Gambian law to hold a suspect more than 72 hours
without filing charges, and while Fatty is the first journalist to go
to trial under the new law, scores have been arrested and detained.
"They did not interrogate me," said Fatty. "They took me straight to the cell without telling me what I have done wrong."
MacDouall
said the government has the right to keep reporters from writing
specious articles with charges of corruption as a gambit to get asylum
abroad.
"Some people try to provoke by writing a story,"
MacDouall said. "So that if they get arrested they get a free ticket to
the United Kingdom or another country ... maybe get a free way to the
United States."
The U.S. recently suspended Gambia's eligibility
for its Millennium Challenge fund _ which gives aid to the poorest
countries in the world _ citing increased restrictions on civil
liberties and press freedom, along with documented evidence of human
rights abuses.
A former assistant editor for The Independent went
into hiding earlier this month after receiving threats related to his
work on a new publication that accused the government of blocking press
freedoms, CPJ said. The paper, The Daily Express, was shut down after
its premiere issue.
Musa Sheriff, a reporter for a weekly Gambian
magazine, said he just expected to be questioned when he saw his name
on the list of people accused of passing information to Freedom
Newspaper, an opposition Web site run by a Gambian living in the United
States. Instead, Sheriff was thrown in jail for eight days and beaten
when he didn't supply any useful information.
Sheriff said he, and the dozens of others arrested, were only subscribers.
"There's
a special place they take you where they beat for 10 or 15 minutes,"
Sheriff said. "Hitting you, kicking you. ... Seven or six people were
on me and beating me." He said others in his cell were also beaten,
including a 14-year-old who subscribed to the site.
At the
African Union summit, a Gambian reporter talked guardedly and said the
venue was full of plainclothes security agents monitoring journalists.
Such wariness was typical of reporters at the event. Many said rumors
of press crackdowns weren't new, noting continuing suspicion
surrounding the murder of a journalist two years ago.
Deyda
Hydara, a reporter for Gambian daily The Point, was shot and killed in
December 2004 by unidentified gunmen. The slaying has never been
solved. Before Hydara's killing, fires destroyed both the previous
offices of The Independent newspaper and the home of a British
Broadcasting Corp. correspondent.
Sarr said that as of late
July, 14 journalists were still detained in Gambian jails, but police
spokesman Aziz Bojang said he was unsure if any were still being held.
MacDouall did not return calls to confirm the information.
