"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 instantly with three bullets to the head and wounding his passengers. Although the killing produced an outcry in the country and internationally, more than eighteen months later no one has been charged with the murder.
From a distance, what is most striking about repression of the media in the Gambia is primarily the crudeness with which it is done, even in comparison to other media-unfriendly governments in Africa. Zimbabwe, for instance, has its carefully-crafted maze of media laws and licences, while Niger's government makes use of opaque court orders and fines.
But in Jammeh's Gambia, anonymous notes warn journalists that 'very soon we will teach one of (you) a very good lesson', while the president himself warns reporters that they will 'pay a high price' if they misquote him. Arrests are made and lawyers' pleas for habeas corpus ignored. On enquiring about the progress of his case, the police told Lamin that all of the files on his arson attack had been removed from police records. And despite the domestic and international outcry which followed Hydara's killing, the police offered only vague reassurances that they were investigating a possible row over money as the motive for the killing. There the government seems content to let the matter rest, despite numerous petitions, protests, memorials and other bids to move the case on.
The next opportunity
Later this summer, on 22 September, Gambia faces presidential elections elections which Jammeh and the APRC are aware they will have a hard time winning. Having lost the trust of most ordinary Gambians, shown themselves to be at best incompetent managers of public affairs and the economy, and having begun to endanger the country's cherished tradition of peaceful politics, the APRC are backed into a corner. Their initial solution was to turn up the heat on the country's four main opposition parties that is, until a state visit from Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, who flew in to warn the Gambian government of the likely negative consequences of continuing on such a route. So the authorities turned their attention once more to the country's press, clamping down particularly hard after deep cracks - within the ruling APRC itself - were revealed with an attempted coup by regime insiders in March.
This time, the attempts at controlling the flow of information to the public included not only the familiar detentions and an indefinite ban (still in force) on the publication of the Independent, but also some novel variations. In late May this year, readers of the Freedom daily, one of the growing number of web-based dissident publications run from overseas, were surprised to see its editor Pa Nderry M'bai quoted prominently on the front page of the government-supporting Daily Observer, denouncing his own previous efforts at opposing the regime and proclaiming his new-found loyalty to the APRC government. Not only that, but M'bai then gave a full list including contacts and addresses of all the Freedom contributors inside Gambia itself, clearly placing those people in severe danger. Bemused readers surprised by this abrupt conversion and wholesale betrayal of the opposition cause did not have to wait long for an explanation, however. The next day's Freedom front page revealed that hackers, who it alleged were based in Southampton, UK, had accessed M'Bai's Yahoo account and downloaded all of the sensitive information held therein now the Gambia's self-appointed media censors had taken their dirty tricks campaign to the web.
But the episode was not without its own surprises for the regime itself, as shown when the name of the Observer's own news editor, Omar Bah, appeared in connection with the Freedom publication. Bah promptly vanished, causing concern among friends and colleagues until he resurfaced in neighbouring Senegal some days later.
So now that Gambia's press persecution has become a regional issue, the question is what the region is prepared to do about it a question that became more pressing as Banjul prepared to host the seventh African Union (AU) summit earlier this month. For Jammeh's APRC government, the affair was a chance for the small riverine state and its leaders to gain some much-needed regional credibility, while a successful bid for recognition as a regional statesman might bolster the Gambian president's stock at home ahead of the elections. But for civil society activists and the independent media, the event was a chance to highlight to the assembled dignitaries the hazards they are exposed to daily. The government moved to pre-empt such efforts, banning a rally of media rights organisations set to be held at the location of Hydara's murder.
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.
