The secret behind low food prices

Maybe a command economy isn’t so bad, after all. Just days after a Gambian newspaper claimed that even with a poor rice crop, the country wasn’t going to face the food price crisis afflicting the rest of the region – and much of the world.

Now we find out why: Gambia’s President Yahya Jammeh won’t let rice traders sell the commodity at high prices. So far, rice importers are going along with it, saying rice stocks are plentiful and there is no need to start a panic by buying a lot.

From Reuters:

"I will use electric broom or send businessmen to jail, those who are bent on selling rice at 1,000 dalasi," Jammeh told residents in the northern town of Farafenni, some 120 km (75 miles) inland from the coastal capital Banjul.

"If anyone is selling a bag of rice at 900 dalasi, take him to police, it is unlawful," Jammeh said.

"Electric broom" is a phrase sometimes used in Gambia to describe Jammeh's propensity to fire officials at will. Jammeh has previously threatened to lock up journalists and shut down their newspapers if he felt he had good reason.

Media briefings: Guinea-Bissau, Gambia

Today the news is not so good.

Atizar Mendes Pereira, journalist and director of Última Hora, a privately-owned Bissau-based newspaper was arrested and briefly detained by the Intelligence Service of the Ministry of Interior of Guinea Bissau, Senegambia reported.

According to the Media Foundation of West Africa, Pereira was interrogated for six hours following a story claiming the country’s military chief of staff had assumed the role of promoting police officers.

“Pereira later told the media that despite the psychological torture he suffered, he still stands by his story and that he would not retract even a comma,” Senegambia said.

Site blocked in Gambia
The Freedom Newspaper, based in the United States, has had its website blocked by GAMTEL, the state-run telecommunications company. According to Scott A. Morgan in Senegambia news, the reaction came after the Freedom Newspaper ran a story on the telecommunications firm.

Perhaps the story in question was actually a letter written by a GAMTEL employee who claimed “GAMTEL bankruptcy did not comes as a surprise to me.”

The story, which is linked here, follows:

GAMTEL's bankruptcy did not come to me as a surprise due to the high corruption and the high level of dependency of the Gambia government. I have been working for GAMTEL for a long time and almost all staff of this telecommunication company are constantly paranoid about the activities of the current president.

He most of the time forces these parastatals to participate or sponsor either directly or indirectly, party activities taking place in the country.

More to the point, having the website blocked by authorities left Gambians relying solely on the state-supported media for their news. “So effectively for a short period there was a news blackout from the Gambia,” Morgan writes.

How to block websites
For those interested, there are four ways an angry government – like Gambia – could shut down a website. I borrow this from an interesting piece by James Fallows in the Atlantic regarding how Chinese authorities limit the access to certain websites through what is now being called “the Great Firewall of China.” .

The first “and bluntest” method is the DNS block. Every website has a specific IP address, which is a series of 12 numbers separated by periods. When a user requests a specific website, say africaflak.blogspot.com, a domain name server – DNS – translates the written form of this name to the IP address so it can be read by computers. By simply blocking certain addresses, servers can be directed to give no reply when a specific domain name – like africaflak.blogspot.com – is requested. Those in charge can tell the server to give viewers a “site not found” error; or, they could merely direct viewers to a different site.

Second, once a request is made to a blacklisted sites, servers which connect a country’s internet with the rest of the world could set a “reset,” which means the connection between a user’s computer and the website in question is cut. Those looking for sites that have raised the government’s ire will receive a “site not found” error or a “The connection has been reset.”

Another way to block sites is to make a list of forbidden keywords in the URL, which is the website’s address in plain English: Senegambia.com or whatever. However, instead of blocking specific sites, people could block any websites containing certain words, like “Deyda Hydara” (the murdered Sierra Leonean journalist) or “press freedom” or “Tiken Jah Fakoly.”

Finally, in China an electronic scanner literally could scan the contents of specific pages. For instance, the New York Times may be scanned for stories relating to Sierra Leone or West Africa or Yahya A. J. J. Jammeh.

All of this working together adds a certain amount of unpredictability to internet users in China, Fallows argues. When people don’t know why their requests are being denied, they begin worrying about their searches.

Amnesty International: Exiled Gambian journalist at risk of forced disappearance

A Gambian journalist living in exile in Senegal is at risk of a forced disappearance by Gambian security agents, Amnesty International warns.

Yahya Danfa, a journalist with the independent Foroyaa Newspaper in Serrekunda, has lived in self-imposed exile after spending six days in a Gambian prison in October. Since arriving in Senegal, he has complained of receiving threatening phone calls and his family living in Gambia has been harassed by members of the National Intelligence Agency.

Amnesty International expressed worries because Gambian security agents are attending the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Conference, which begins Thursday in Dakar.

Danfa was originally arrested on October 6 in Gambia along with two researchers from Amnesty International after visiting opposition politician Ousman Jatta, affectionally called Rambo, who has been in prison since September 2006.

By most accounts, Gambia has one of the worst track records of press freedom in West Africa. Here is a summary of the Reporters Without Borders 2007 report on Gambia:

Ten journalists arrested, one missing, many others in exile, countless unsolved murders for which supporters of the president are suspected of responsibility or complicity, the memory of a murdered journalist besmirched by the government and a permanent climate of fear: this is the terrible track record of President Yahya Jammeh’s as far as press freedom is concerned.

He's a busy man: On this page is an official list of President Jammeh’s official duties.

Gambian government bans RFI

From Blogger News Network

The Gambia Government has resumed its crackdown on the press, as it banned Radio France International relay FM Station, which is aired on state radio, the Freedom Newspaper can reveal. The decision to band the popular radio comes amidst a story reported by the Paris based Radio France International that the terrorists who murdered the four French Nationals in Mauritania escaped through Guinea Bissau to The Gambia. RFI’S affiliate station in The Gambia has ceased to function since the reportage of the said story. The Government of The Gambia in a statement accuses RFI of “professional dishonesty and erroneous reporting. “ RFI is yet to react to the Government’s accusations.

A release from the Department of State for Information, rebuffed the RFI story describing as it as erroneous. The Government says there was no terrorists from Mauritania and therefore strongly disputed the authenticity of the RFI story. It says it had accordingly drawn the attention of the RFI about the “erroneous” story it reported about the Gambia.

… RFI ceased to be on the airwaves since January 15^TH 2008. Information Ministry sources say the decision to ban RFI in The Gambia emanates from the President. “ The Government has decided to suspend the operations of the RFI affiliate station housed by the Gambia Radio and Television Services for security reasons. The President was very upset when he heard on the radio that the killers of the French Nationals were harbored in the Gambia. His Government has been linked to welcoming Hezbollah terrorists into the country and they thought that the best way to punish RFI was to take off its relay station from the airwaves. He has given directive for all RFI programs to be suspended with immediate effect. SOS Gaye has since advised her staff to cease to broadcast RFI programs.” said a well placed source at the State House in Banjul.

Here is Reporters Without Borders overview for the year 2006 for journalism in Gambia.

Ten journalists arrested, one missing, many others in exile, countless unsolved murders for which supporters of the president are suspected of responsibility or complicity, the memory of a murdered journalist besmirched by the government and a permanent climate of fear: this is the terrible track record of President Yahya Jammeh’s as far as press freedom is concerned.