Do the findings of the recent Afrobarometer survey on The Gambia’s Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission affirm the fact that truth and reconciliation mechanisms are snowflake mechanisms that are incapable of delivering justice for the victims of human rights violations?

Three years after the arbitrary executions of nine prisoners in The Gambia, there is still no response for the families. No one knows where the bodies are, whether they were buried or the motive for the extra-judicial killings that shocked the world.

July 22, 2015 is President Yahya Jammeh’s twenty-first anniversary in power. To mark this day, the numerous Gambians murdered under the Jammeh regime are crying out for justice in a joint letter to West Africa’s King of Impunity. These victims, who are tired of waiting for justice, have expressed their suffering in the absence of accountability for The Gambia’s violations of human rights, including freedom of expression and press freedom.

He claimed to be a different kind of soldier and promised not to hang on to power, and never to install a dictatorship. Who said that power corrupts and that absolute power corrupts absolutely?

The Bill discriminates against people on the basis of their sexual orientation, denying them equal rights to which they are entitled under international law. It will have a devastating impact upon the lives of LGBT people in the Gambia

The Napoleonic syndrome of President Jammeh expressed through his recent withdrawal from the British Commonwealth conceals his gross human rights violations, executions of political dissidents and homophobic pronoucements – rather than any principled opposition against neo-colonialism

Whilst The Gambia remains a member of the Commonwealth that affirms freedom of expression as one of its core values, the government of President Yahya Jammeh has been clamping down on newspapers and journalists with zeal

Pansy Tlakula, the African Union’s Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information, has done her best to address the continued harassment of journalists in the Gambia. In her role as commissioner of the African Commission on Human Peoples’ Rights, she has appealed many times to the government of the West African nation to respect people’s right to freedom of expression. But it has not been enough to prevent the Gambian government’s crackdown on the media.

Reporters Without Borders says it is deeply concerned by death threats received in e-mails by the journalists Baboucarr Ceesay and Abubaccar Saidykhan, against whom charges of conspiracy and inciting violence were dropped earlier this week. 'The conditions that journalists face in Gambia have deteriorated to alarming extent,' Reporters Without Borders said. 'Since August this year, Yahya Jammeh, a predator of freedom of information, has been increasing judicial and administrative pressure on journalists working for independent news organizations.'

Gambian authorities have dropped charges of conspiracy and incitement to violence against two journalists who were arrested on 10 September, the country's press union said. Baboucarr Ceesay, vice president of the Gambia Press Union and Abubacarr Saidykhan, a freelance journalist, were arrested and held for nearly four days after seeking permission to hold a peaceful protest against the recent execution of nine death row prisoners.

The Civil Society Associations Gambia (CSAG) has filed an application against the government at the ECOWAS Court of Justice regarding the West African country’s 38 death row inmates at Mile 2 Central Prisons. Banka Manneh, chairman of the CSAG, made the announcement in a statement released by the West African bloc ECOWAS on Monday in the Nigerian capital Abuja. The group accused the Gambian government of violating the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Customary International law.

Public, forceful international pressure on Gambian President Yahya Jammeh to halt ongoing executions of death row prisoners was successful - at least temporarily - leading activists to call for governments, multinationals and human rights groups to exert more sustained pressure on the government to clean up its human rights act. 'For far too long the international and regional community has been far too quiet [on Gambia] - we haven’t been able to test if pressure does indeed work,' said Sherman Nikolaus, an Amnesty International Gambia researcher, who noted that the about-turn shows the president does care about his reputation, internationally and regionally.

The Gambian president has suspended the execution of prisoners on death row, amid an international outcry. In a statement, Yahya Jammeh said he was responding to 'numerous appeals'. Nine prisoners have been executed since his vow in August to clear death row. Another 37 inmates remain on death row.

Repressed by their government for years, the force for change in Gambia is likely to come from citizens finding the courage to 'seek another way, from another place'.

An activist serving life imprisonment with hard labour for printing and distributing T-shirts calling for an end to dictatorship in The Gambia must be freed, global rights body, Amnesty International (AI), has said. The global rights body made the call as it marked its annual Day of Action, calling for improved human rights in the West African country.

Human rights groups under the umbrella of 'The Coalition for Human Rights in The Gambia' have called for an end to the 'reign of fear' in The Gambia. The call was made in a statement issued by the coalition and received by PANA in Dakar as the Gambian government marked the anniversary of the 22 July 1994 military takeover which it termed 'Freedom Day.' According to the coalition, the real situation of human rights in The Gambia 'is often subtly hidden' by the Yahya Jammeh administration on occasions like the celebration of the 22 July, which is a true 'black day' for human rights as it marks the seizure of power through 'a coup by the administration that has since then relentlessly engaged in several serious violations of fundamental human rights'.

The leader of the opposition party Gambia Moral Congress (GMC) has urged the director general of the National Intelligence Agency to resign over torture allegations. Mr Mai Fatty made these remarks in an open letter addressed to Mr Numo Kujabi, the head of the spy agency. Mr Fatty said over 90 per cent of NIA detainees had alleged some form of torture, and some of the worst brutalities were alleged to have taken place inside Bambadinka.

Abdul Hamid Adiamoh, managing editor of Today, a privately-owned newspaper, was on 28 June released by the Banjul Magistrates’ Court. Before his release, he had been in detention for eight days without charge. Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) sources reported that Adiamoh paid an outrageous fine of 100,000 Dalasis (about US$ 3,142) before he was released.

There is mounting concern that The Gambia, Africa’s smallest country, could face yet another shortfall in the 2012/2013 agricultural season in the production of rice, millet, maize and groundnuts, the main crops, crippling its efforts to become food secure. The planting season has begun, yet there is a huge seed deficit. 'It is essential that farmers receive quality drought-tolerant seeds, as well as fertilizer and other production support by the end of May 2012 to start their next production campaign,' said Sonia Nguyen, a spokesperson for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in the Sahel.

Participants at the NGOs Forum of African Commission on Human and People’s Right (ACHPR) on 12 April added their voice to the widespread condemnation of the Gambian authorities over their deliberate policy of blocking access to critical online news websites in the country. Systematically, the Gambia authorities have either attacked the online news newspapers by hacking into their websites or blocking their IP addresses, making it impossible for Gambians to access the news sites.