Saturday, September 28, 2013

Yaya Jammeh issues threats to families of protesters

Death threats have started being made against the families of, at least, two of the Gambian dissidents who participated in a protest against the Gambian dictator this week in New York City.  Both victims are also journalists in exile in the United States.

Omar Bah, a former Daily Observer journalist and now a resident of Rhode Island and Editor of American Street News (ASN), and Nanama Keita, a former Sports journalist, also at the Daily Observer who now resides in New York, both reported threats by members of the Jammeh delegation to their families in Banjul.   Mr. Bah was threatened through a Facebook postings from none other than a sitting member of the National Assembly. These direct threats against the parents of the editor of ASN by Assembly member for Lower Saloum, Pa Malick Ceesay, was made in territorial United States using a computer terminal, presumably from the New York area before they were disgracefully shown the door before the end of their planned stay in the U.S.

Nanama Keita, a former Daily Observer sports journalist who escaped to the United States after he was falsely accuse by the regime for being an informer of a dissident online newspaper has also revealed that his family in The Gambia is being threatened.  According to Mr. Keita, he reached his family in The Gambia, most of whom were in tears as he was informed of the threats from members of the Jammeh delegation who have returned to Banjul this morning after escaping from their Ritz-Carlton bunker in the dead of night.  Their humiliating defeat at the hands of a handful of dissidents including the two journalists whose families are now being threatened.

The Jammeh regime is violent and has demonstrated time and time again that it will not hesitate to use violence to keep the population in check.  Now that the underbelly of Yaya Jammeh and his regime has been exposed by these determined Gambian dissidents, he will try to use violence and torture against innocent Gambians whose only crime is their relations to these true Gambian patriots who took to the streets of New York and the grounds of the United Nations to draw international attention to the dictatorship of Yaya Jammeh.  Jammeh's main worry now is that he's been exposed as a coward which is contrary to a carefully crafted person that portrays him as brave and unwavery.  It turns out he's afraid of the sight of a handful of protesters with cardboard signs.

On this note, I am sharing this blog as I share most of my blogs with the United States State Department, through the US Embassy in Banjul, and the European Union Delegation for the record.  The contents of the blog will also be shared with ECOWAS, African Union, Amnesty International and other rights groups in the U.S. and Europe.

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