Gambia Crawls towards Press Freedom

Hard on the heels of the recently launched Hunger FREE report revealing the rising hunger rate in The Gambia comes another report, indicating a crawl towards press freedom in the country.

Reporters Without Borders, an international journalists’ organisation, says African journalists, Gambians included, are still seeking for freedom from their governments, decades after independence.

The Gambia has moved from last year’s ranking as 137^th worst media friendly country to 125^th this year. But the report says The Gambia was neck and neck with Niger last year, who has made an impressive leap of 35-place jump from 139 to 104^th this year.  

Relation between the second republic and the media in The Gambia is sour, and government is showing no sign of respite in loosening the noose on the neck of journalists.

Growing calls for the Gambia government to release journalist Chief Ebrima Manneh of pro-government Daily Observer newspaper, who was allegedly arrested since 2006, has fallen on deaf ears, while government’s seemingly laid-back investigation, if any infact, on the murder of a veteran journalist Deyda Hydara, co-proprietor of a private independent newspaper, The Point,  remain  bitter pills for journalists to swallow.

 

Government has also closed-down some major media outlets, including the independent newspaper, new citizen newspaper, and citizen FM radio.

Doing everything at its disposal to muzzle the press, government also relies on numerical strength in parliament to enact repressive laws amid hefty penalties, while courts have been described as worst places for journalists.

Several journalists suffer arbitrary arrest and unconstitutional detentions as well as allegations of torture in the hands of security agents.

The neighboring sisterly republic of Senegal has become the safe-haven for local journalists hosting about a dozen exiled Gambian journalists. Many others are in US and Europe.

“Many African countries are marking the 50^th  anniversary of their independence, 2010 should have been a year of celebration but the continent’s journalists were not invited to the party,” Reporters Without Borders says.

Eritrea (178th) is at the very bottom of the world ranking for the fourth year running as it holds at least 30 journalists and four media contributors are held incommunicado, followed by Sudan (172), with a state surveillance of print media and closure of  the opposition daily Rai-al-Shaab and the jailing of five members of its staff.

Namibia tops the ranking as Africa’s most media friendly country and world 21^st, while Cape Verde (26th) has caught up with Ghana (26th) and Mali (26th). South Africa (38th) has fallen five places.

“Surveillance of the press and a decline in the climate for journalists during the May elections account for Ethiopia’s continued bad ranking (139th). Violence against journalists, arbitrary police arrests and intelligence agency abuses explain why Nigeria (145th) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (148th) are still in the bottom third,” the report says.