Author: Gainako

By Aisha Dabo & Jeffrey Smith The Gambia, the smallest country on mainland Africa, has a reputation for being the “Smiling Coast of Africa,” thanks in part to its stunning coastline and abundance of natural beauty. What many outsiders forget, however, is that the country was at the heart of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Gambian lore is thus inherently linked to Kunta Kinteh, arguably Africa’s most famous slave whose epic refusal to bow to a slave-owners’ whip and chain is the stuff of legend. Kinteh’s saga has come to symbolize the larger struggle for marginalized peoples everywhere to persevere against…

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The soft power of America’s open society has once again come to the rescue of its hard power misadventures, this time by coming clean on the post-9/11 practice of torture. As China and several other countries intensify their crackdown on the Internet and open expression in general, the U.S. offers a lesson: honest criticism fortifies the legitimacy of government, not weakens it, because it assures an avenue for self-correction. In The WorldPost this week, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who led the charge as head of the Senate Intelligence Committee that released the controversial torture report, writes that “torture goes against the…

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As a follow up to early unconfirmed reports from Banjul of Sait Matty Jaw and others’ being arrested and detained at the Mile II central prison, Gainako can now officially confirmed that Mr. Jaw a Gambian Social Justice Activist along with one Seth Yaw Kandeh a Ghanaian national and Mr Olufemi Erinli Titus a Nigerian national were both arraigned before the Banjul Magistrate’s court and charged with two counts of “disobedience of statutory duty, two counts of conspiracy to commit misdemeanor and failure to register a business” contrary to laws of the Gambia. The charges were read before the accused presided…

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Breaking Now…. Unconfirmed reports reaching Gainako at this hour has it that Sait Matty Jaw a youth Social Justice Advocate and a junior lecturer at the University of the Gambia has been rearrested and sent straight to Mile II prisons. He is reported to be jailed along with a Nigerian and Ghanian nationals who were still being held at the NIA headquarters in Banjul since their arrest on November 6th. On November 6, 2014, three African SFL student leaders were taken in for questioning by the Gambia’s notorious National Intelligence Agency for their alleged involvement with a human rights group…

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Gambia’s culture of corruption epidemic extends to its foreign offices A GANG led by Gambian diplomats who turned their London embassy into a tax-free tobacconist, cheating the British taxpayer out of nearly STG5 million ($A9.13 million) have been jailed for a total of 33 years. YUSUPHA Bojang, 54, the deputy head of the Gambian Diplomatic Mission in Kensington, and his colleagues ordered 29 tonnes of rolling tobacco over three years. More than half a million 50g pouches were imported at tax-free rates, which were only permissible for goods for personal use…

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Arabic Students forced by Gambia government to demonstrate in Gambia against homosexuality By Demba Baldeh Mass demonstrations either for or against an issue are nothing new; it is a form of collective expression of a large number of people by coming out in the streets to express their frustrations or celebrations about a certain issue. It has been around for as long as time immemorial.  What is unique about mass demonstration is its symbolism and the kind of message it conveys to the general public. Demonstrations are mostly put…

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Senate Report Says Torture Program Was More Gruesome, Widespread Than CIA Claimed WASHINGTON — The Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday released the highly anticipated 500-page summary of its report on the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program, providing a sobering glimpse into one of the darkest chapters in the U.S. government’s history. In the report, a product of a 5-year investigation, Senate investigators reveal sordid details of the systemic and individual failures by the agency personnel who ran the “enhanced interrogation program” — the government’s euphemism for systematic torture — during the George W. Bush administration. The program involved capturing terrorism suspects…

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When someone is killed, few things tell you more about how the the person who did the killing thinks and feels about the deceased than what they choose to do in the immediate aftermath of the killing itself. For instance, when Michael Dunn, after shooting and killing teenager Jordan Davis, went back to his hotel room, ordered himself a pizza, fixed a Coke and rum, and went to bed, it gives us a glimpse into the peculiar mindset of the killer—who has since been convicted for his crime. Scott Peterson, immediately after killing his pregnant wife, Laci, “went fishing,”…

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Seven Gambian diplomats who used their London embassy as a front for selling more than half a million pouches of tax-free tobacco have been found guilty of cheating the UK taxpayer out of almost £4.8m. Yusupha Bojang, the deputy head of London’s Gambian Diplomatic Mission, ordered 29 tonnes of tax-free rolling tobacco in a three-year scam together with his colleagues. During the trial, Southwark Crown court heard how the embassy building in London’s Kensington Court was transformed into a tobacconist store, with smokers queuing outside to buy imported packets of Old Holborn and…

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CORDEG ONGOING ACTIVITIES From the spring of this year to date CORDEG has been involved in a number of activities and exploratory works in promoting our aims and objects. International/Diplomatic: CORDEG was represented at the Brussels EU/AFRICA summit planned protest Match in April 2014. Although the protest as originally conceived did not take place, because of the failure of the Gambian delegation to show up at the Event..The combined presence of CORDEG, some of its affiliate associations and those of similar organisations from other European countries sent a chilled message to…

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