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Her Excellency, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State, U.S.A.
RE: IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF FATOU JAW-MANNEH
It is with great concern and urgency that I write to solicit your assistance in the immediate release of Ms. Fatou Jaw-Manneh, a Gambian journalist based in the U.S. Early this week, Ms. Jaw-Manneh arrived in The Gambia for a family visit but was arrested by Gambian authorities at the airport.
Gambians in the Diaspora and at home are very concerned about her safety, given The Gambia Government's poor human rights record. Since coming to power in 1994, President Yahya Jammeh's Government(s) have consistently repressed journalists, set ablaze printing presses and shut down radio stations. On December 16, 2004 Deyda Hydara, a longtime journalist, co-owner and Editor of The Point Newspaper, was shot and killed and two of his co-workers riding in the same car suffered serious bodily injuries.
It is against this backdrop that your intervention is urgently needed to secure Ms. Jaw-Manneh's release as we fear for her life and safety in the hands of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), the regime's brutally repressive arm.
Sincerely,
Professor Abdoulaye Saine,
Department of Political Science &
University of Denver (GSIS Alumni)
CC: Her Excellency, Dr. Jendayi Frazer, Asst. Secretary of State, Africa
CC: Her Excellency, Dr. Cindy Courville, U.S. Ambassador to The African Union, Ethiopia
CC: His Excellency, Joseph D. Strafford, U.S. Ambassador, The Gambia
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Dr Fox says...
“Extreme justice is an extreme injury: for we ought not to approve of those terrible laws that make the smallest offences capital, nor of that opinion of the Stoics that makes all crimes equal; as if there were no difference to be made between the killing (of) a man and the taking (of) his purse, between which, if we examine things impartially, there is no likeness nor proportion .” ~— Sir Thomas More in Utopia, Bk 1. (1516)
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