Popular independent Gambian radio station Taranga FM was Sunday ordered to cease operations by national security agents for unspecified reasons, a security source and staff member said.
The station, which translates news from Gambian papers into local languages, has previously been silenced. In July 2015, Alagie Ceesay , the station manager, was arrested by the country’s secret police on charges of sedition and “publication of false news”, charges for privately sharing a provocative photo of President Yahya Jammeh, showing a gun pointed at a picture of Jammeh. However, Ceesay escaped from hospital where he was being treated in mid-April last year while on trial for sedition.
“Four National Intelligence Agency operatives and one police officer in uniform came to the radio station this afternoon (Sunday) around 2:30 pm and told us to stop broadcasting,” a staff member told AFP on condition of anonymity.
“They said they have been ordered by the director general of NIA, Yankuba Badjie, to tell us to stop broadcasting with immediate effect. We asked them the reason for their action, but they said they are only acting on executive orders and do not know the reason why the radio should stop broadcasting,” he added.
According to a security source no one had been arrested and so far no statement has been issued concerning the reason why the radio station was ordered off the air.
Jammeh, who has ruled the small West African country with an iron fist since taking power in a bloodless coup in 1994, lost December’s presidential election but has rejected the results and filed a court challenge. He is regularly accused of rights abuses and repression of the media.
The Gambia ranked 145 out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ 2016 World Press Freedom Index, pointing to “a climate of terror around anything remotely to do with journalism”
