Deyda Hydara murder: Gambia Press Union tasks govt. to Investigate
By Shout-Africa Gambian Correspondent – As journalists in The Gambia and beyond mark the seventh anniversary of the gruesome murder of the late Deyda Hydara, co-proprietor and managing editor of The Point newspaper, the Gambia Press Union has called on the Gambia Government to move heaven and earth to bring the killers of Deyda Hydara to book.
The statement, signed by the Secretary General of the Union, among others stated that the failure to bring the perpetrators of this heinous crime to book will only entrench a culture of impunity in our society.
Below we reproduce the full text of the statement:
Compatriots, Fellow Journalists and Friends of the Media,
December 16th 2011 marks seven years after Deyda Hydara, co-proprietor and managing editor of The Point newspaper was assassinated in a drive-by shooting. Yet the gunmen behind this nefarious act are yet to be arrested and brought to book.
It is imperative herein that the Government of the Gambia expends all its efforts and tools to investigate this matter in order to bring the culprits to book. Failure to bring the perpetrators of this heinous crime to book will only entrench a culture of impunity in our society.
The Gambia Government and indeed all Gambians need to realize that a culture of impunity in any society threatens the very security and safety of the life of each and every one in that society, sooner or later. What happened to Deyda can happen to any other Gambian at any time.
It is the responsibility of the Government to protect the right to life of all Gambians as enshrined in Section 18 of our Constitution. Thus the Government of the Gambia should move heaven and earth to bringing these criminals to book as this barbaric act has no place in a civilized democratic society.
The murder of Deyda is a fundamental human rights violation that goes against the very essence of our constitution and all regional and international instruments that The Gambia has ratified.
These include the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, hence the responsibility to ensure justice prevails and the protection of human rights in our society lies squarely in the hands of the Government.
Given the fact that The Gambia Government has several progressive allies in the world, we recommend that the Government solicit support from the international community to enable her to unearth the truth.
It should be noted that journalists like all other sectors and professionals are legitimate and have a right to contribute their quota to national development.
We serve a crucial role not only in bringing the state closer to the citizenry, but also promote the creation of an open society where democracy and good governance flourish.
The accomplishment of our crucial role would be hard to come by when rogue elements in the midst of society who negate the work of journalists enjoy the fruits of impunity.
The killers of Deyda Hydara must be brought to justice.
Profile of the late Deyda Hydara: The Prince of the Pen
The name Deyda in Hassaniya Arabic means someone of great stature. It is not known why Deyda’s father gave him such a meaningful name, but it could be he sensed that his son had the makings of a distinguished character.
If so, then his father’s intuition was spot on, because early on in life Deyda showed he was cut out for a big destiny. Unlike his other three siblings who stuck to the traditional Quranic school (Dara), he had a foot in both camps – the Arabic and Western educational systems. Coming from the ultra-conservative Hydara clan that claims its ancestry from the Holy Prophet Muhammad (SAW), his hybrid education at the time must have caused quite a stir.
The Hydaras are renowned in the Sahelian region for their exceptional grasp of Quranic Science, so much so that all Hydara males are schooled in the art from a very tender age, and are required to uphold the clan’s heritage without adulteration and apology. But he turned out to be one of the few who dared in the thick of the Hydara conservatism to break with tradition to see how the other half lives.
Though Baba Hydara had qualms about his son’s incursion into the unfamiliar terrain of Western civilization, he laughed it off as a fad his son would soon outgrow, but he was mistaken – Deyda stayed the course, taking to his studies like a duck to water. But such drive is about par for the course for someone born under the zodiac sign of Gemini who are often typified by their self-will, sharp wit, astuteness, and curiosity.
Deyda Hydara was born on 9 June 1946 at Dobson Street in Banjul. His father, Baba Hydara, was a Mauritanian immigrant of Moor extraction who ran a grocery shop at 8 Hagan Street, where Deyda grew up.
On his maternal side, he descended from the Faal clan of Kaur, where Halima, Deyda’s mother, was born. When his father’s business slackened, he returned to Nouakchott, Mauritania, leaving the teenage Deyda and his younger ones – Lala, Mamana and Dawda – with their mother who later remarried one Papa Bila at Barra, where she lived until her death in 1992; two years after Deyda’s father had passed away in Nouakchott.
Like most teenage boys, Deyda took to street football with gusto. On the pitch, he would pace down the right flank, waltzing through seemingly impregnable defences to pull out passes that were usually too tricky for goalkeepers to parry, much less save; but he gave up his football mania after his secondary school teacher told him it was a dead-end career unsuitable for a hot brain like him.
His quitting football is like kicking off a ladder after one has used it to climb to the top. It was through football that he forged a friendship that was to change his life forever.
He hit it off with Joseph Gilikou during one of their countless football games, and both of them became inseparable childhood chums, though it was Deyda who frequented more Joseph’s family home at No. 10 Leman Street (now Ecowas Avenue), bantering and occasionally helping out with some domestic chores.
His get-up-and-go so impressed Joseph’s aunt, Tata Aubi Caroline Keita (nee Goddard), that she enrolled him at the Alliance Francaise at Picton Street in Banjul, popularly known then as the “Foyer”.
Deyda excelled at the final examination and was sent to Lycee Gaston Berger in Kaolack, Senegal, where he lost himself in French literature. Shortly before taking his baccalaureate, he fell in love with the writings of Albert Camus, Rebalais, and Jean-Paul Satre whose existentialist philosophy originated by the Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegard, caught his fascination, which in turn led him to study in-depth the works of Frank Fanon and Che Guevara.
He kept up his passion for literature right up to Cheikh Anta Diop University, Dakar, Senegal. He discontinued his university education after two years, due to lack of funds.
He took this setback in his stride and pressed on with life, eager to get a job and contribute something to the family’s upkeep. At about this time, he was already wide awake to his theatrical flair, as he had already strutted his stuff in a number of school dramas and musical concerts.
He made up his mind then to rely on his own innate ability – his voice – and faith in God to pull him through the unknown.
He got a job as a disc jockey at Radio Syd, anchoring three entertainment programmes – Morning Show, Rencontre and Disque Agogo.
About this time, he met and married Maria Dacosta with whom he had four children – one girl and three boys.
Alongside his basic responsibilities at Radio Syd, he worked first as a translator and then as a correspondent for the Agence France Presse (AFP).
He also joined The Senegambia Sun as a special correspondent and was to join Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) in latter years as a correspondent.
He left Radio Syd to set up Excaf Printing, which metamorphosed into The Point newspaper.
He took over the editorial seat of the paper, when Baboucarr resigned as editor-in-chief of the paper.
He was for a long time the treasurer of the West Africa Journalists Association (WAJA). The other organisations he belonged to included the Association Des Journalistes Francophones (AJF), the Faateleku Cultural Group, the Premier Lions Club and Worldview The Gambia.
Throughout his career as a journalist, he was obsessed with press freedom, good governance and economic development.
Deyda Hydara: Seven years of impunity
This is yet another anniversary of the assassination of prominent Gambian journalist, Deyda Hydara, the seventh year since he was brutally murdered by unknown assailants and yet there is no indication that the Gambian authorities have any intentions to investigate the case with a view to apprehending those responsible for this heinous crime.
It is unfortunate however that every time President Jammeh comments on the case, he makes some ambiguous remarks which tend to confuse rather than clarify his government’s standpoint on the issue.
A case in point was his last interview with the BBC in which he compared Deyda’s brutal murder to the deaths of other Gambians in road accidents, thus further dashing any hopes that the authorities have any intentions of investigating the case.
We can all recall the so-called ‘Confidential Report’ that was released in 2005 in which the authorities, instead of displaying any seriousness in investigating the case, chose to subject Deyda’s personal character to all sorts of disparaging comments, even to the extent of blaming his death on his ‘wayward’ behaviour.
While there is as yet no iota of evidence to accuse the government or anyone else of responsibility for Deyda’s murder, but the least anyone expected from the authorities was to show commitment in thoroughly investigating the case with a view to bringing the culprits to justice.
Therefore, their failure to do so is tantamount to shirking their responsibilities to a bona fide Gambian citizen.
From the very beginning, the Gambia Press Union and other civil society groups have called on the authorities to invite more competent investigating bodies from abroad to help our security forces to unravel the truth of the case, but they always turned down the call, saying the security forces have the competence to carry out the investigation and yet, so far, they have failed to carry out any serious investigation.
There is no doubt that if the government had agreed to such a proposal, then by now the truth would have been known as to who killed him and why. Therefore, the failure to investigate the case has definitely dented The Gambia’s image as a respecter of the rule of law and provider of justice for its citizens.
Therefore, in view of the obvious reluctance on the part of the Gambian authorities to investigate this heinous crime or invite other competent bodies for help, we are left with no other option but to call on regional bodies like ECOWAS and the African Union, or even the United Nations and the international community to assume their responsibilities and ensure that justice is done.
In fact the failure of the authorities to make the autopsy report available to the Hydara family or to even carry out a forensic analysis of the bullets recovered from Deyda’s body, which are some of the most basic things anyone would expect from any responsible authority, can easily be interpreted to mean an apparent attempt of a cover-up.
