Fatou Jaw-Manneh

Fatou Jaw-Manneh is a Gambian journalist and activist who received political asylum from the United States in 1994 and has lived in the U.S. ever since. She is a well-known member of the Gambian community in the U.S. and runs the popular news and politics website Maafanta.com. She was the first female reporter at the Gambian Daily Observer and is widely known as “Gambia's Iron Lady” and the “Dame of the Flaming Pen.”

Writing on her website Maafanta.com, Jaw-Manneh has argued that “no other sector in Gambian civil society has suffered as much as the private press under President Yahya Jammeh.” Although he had originally “presented himself as a different kind of...leader, one who respects and believes in a free and vibrant press,” he had eventually turned the press into his “punching bag,” as a result of which “most journalists have been forced to go into exile or to abandon the profession due to family pressure, while a number of newspapers and radio stations have been indefinitely closed by the government.”

Arrest and trial In March 2007, Jaw-Manneh traveled from the U.S. to Gambia, where her father had recently died. She was arrested upon arrival at Banjul Airport on March 28, 2007,

Asked if the arrest had come as a shock, Jaw-Manneh said she had been “caught off guard…but not shocked, given the hostility towards journalists in the country.”

On 4 April, Jaw-Manneh appeared before a court in Kanifing and was charged on three counts: Each of the counts carried a prison term of two years, a fine, or both. She was released on 25,000 dalasis (US$950) bail, but ordered to surrender her travel documents. The trial was set for 11 April 2007.

Return to U.S. After her return to the U.S., Jaw-Manneh continued criticizing Jammeh, describing him as “more dangerous, more corrupt than ever” and as “one of the richest and most corrupt leaders in Africa, who is “selling everything in Gambia, from bananas to bread to meat,” and trafficking in drugs and arms. She has claimed that “Gambians are being detained, jailed and killed at random,” and has also charged that “Gambians have never seen such a leader and hope he is the last of his kind in the country.”

In September 2012, Jaw-Manneh took part in a protest by Gambian and Senegalese citizens outside the State Capitol in St. Paul, Minnesota, against Jammeh's execution of nine death-row inmates. “The man is too brutal,” said Jaw-Manneh. “We are not animals… Jammeh should not decide who should live, die, eat or travel. It is unfair.” In a videotaped interview, she said: “We have an animal as a president. He’s a cannibal, he’s a thief…he’s a very, very wicked human being….We have to show him we are not afraid of him. It has to stop, this human sacrifice, this killing Gambians every day. It has to stop.”

In November 2013, Jaw-Manneh wrote a 75th birthday tribute to Best, whom she thanked for having hired her and others who had “no family or government connections.” She spoke at the Oslo Freedom Forum in May 2014.

Honors and awards She won Oxfam Novib/PEN International Free Expression Award in 2007. It is presented “to writers who continue to work for freedom of expression in the face of persecution.” She won the Hellman/Hammett award from Human Rights Watch in 2009. The award aims “to help writers who dare to express ideas that criticize official public policy or people in power.”