PRESS FREEDOM / LIBERTE DE LA PRESSE
15 June 2005 / 15 juin 2005

THE GAMBIA
Africa-wide radio appeal six months after murder of Deyda Hydara

Reporters Without Borders has launched an
Africa-wide radio appeal in connection with the
murder of prominent journalist Deyda Hydara,
which it said Gambia's government has "spent the
last six months trying to hush up".

Hydara was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in
Banjul on the evening of 16 December 2004 while
at the wheel of his car.

Six months after his murder, on 16 June 2005, the
organisation called on radios across Africa to
broadcast a 30-second spot featuring the voice of
his son, Baba Hydara.

In the radio appeal made by Reporters Without
Borders in Paris, Baba Hyrdara says in French and
English, "My father was killed six months ago.
His killers are still at large. The government is
sullying his memory. My family and I ask for
justice to be done".

  "Deyda Hydara was The Gambia's best known
journalist", the organisation said, adding that
it would do its utmost to see that light was shed
on the case. The appeal can be heard in .aiff and
.mp3 format on:

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=14087

"We want to address ourselves directly to
President Yahya Jammeh, who is the only person
who can change things in The Gambia, "said
Reporters Without Borders. "We want to tell him
that we will continue to campaign alongside the
Hydara family despite the unproductiveness of the
investigation and the smear campaign against our
correspondent in The Gambia. "

"We are asking for help from radio stations to
show him that the murder of a journalist of such
standing goes beyond the borders of The Gambia,
contrary to what he would wish people to think.
This international solidarity will provide
support to the family, friends and colleagues of
Deyda Hydara, who for the past six months have
been exposed to the indignities and bad faith of
the government."

The co-founder and editor of The Point, an
independent newspaper that appears three times a
week, and the correspondent of Agence
France-Presse (AFP) and Reporters Without
Borders, Hydara was gunned down behind the wheel
of his car as he was driving two employees home
late at night on 16 December. He was an outspoken
critic of two laws curbing press freedom that
were passed by the national assembly on the eve
of his murder.

Reporters Without Borders made two fact-finding
visits to The Gambia, in December and April,
partly to support his family and his newspaper,
but also in attempt to advance an investigation
that was going nowhere. The organisation was able
to reconstruct how Hydara spent his last day and
it identified a number of leads and hypotheses
which any serious investigators ought to have
pursued.

In particular, the organisation discovered that
his murder, which was carried out by
professionals, followed the pattern of a series
of attacks against journalists and other figures
who had upset the authorities. The circumstances,
the method of operation, the recurring use of
cars with no licence plates and preceding death
threats were similar in every case. Hydara's
murder matches the pattern of many press freedom
violations in recent years in Gambia and in all
of these cases, the National Intelligence Agency
(NIA) has been identified as the perpetrator or
leading suspect.

By piecing together information in the accounts
provided by different sources, Reporters Without
Borders also discovered that Hydara was under
surveillance by the security services and was
still being watched just minutes before he was
murdered a few hundred metres from a police
barracks.

-BambaLaye
==============================================
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
-Martin Luther King Jr.

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