FILEP 2011

The FILEP delegates and organizations mentioned hereunder, strongly condemn the arrest and prosecution of  Bai Mass Kah,  a Gambian national employed as a messenger by the Foroyaa Newspaper, a daily in The Gambia. Kah was arrested on Thursday, 14 November, 2013 and detained for 13 days at various police stations and the National Intelligence Agency before being arraigned in court and charged with sedition.

The charges arose from an incident on 14^th November, 2013 where it is alleged he told a man who was pasting  a picture of President Yahya Jammeh on a vehicle ‘why don’t you paste the photo of the President on the sky?’

Kah made his first appearance on Wednesday 27 November and was granted bail of US Dollar 2600 the following day. He is due to appear in court again on December 2.

FILEP and the organizations below, meeting in Ougadougou, Burkina Faso, as part of a celebration of the festival of freedom of expression, condemn this high handed manner of dealing with citizens’ rights to free expression and call for the charges agains Kah to be immediately dropped. We call on the Gambian justice system to live up to the ideals enshrined in the African Union Declaration on free expression, and whose custodian, the Commission on Human and People’s Rights, is housed in the Gambia.

Issued on the 29^th November 2013 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso