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BANJUL, Gambia (AP) - Scores of reporters jailed, some emerging with tales of police beatings. Newspapers shuttered. A journalist forced into hiding.
Gambia — a sliver of a nation on the West African coast — bills itself to foreigners as a cheerful beach resort, but critics say the country shelters a corrupt regime that is arresting reporters and closing down papers to silence opponents ahead of September presidential elections.
The situation has deteriorated since Gambia hosted the profile-raising African Union summit in late June, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. Since then, a reporter for a pro-government paper has gone missing, a nascent publication has been shut down after one issue and its Nigerian founder arrested, and a reporter for a shuttered publication has gone into hiding, CPJ said.
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