Earlier this month, a Zambian news outlet released what it claimed was the ruling party’s top-secret strategy to steal the presidential election scheduled for August this year. While the document itself has yet to be verified, there is no doubt that the strategy is already being implemented, almost to the letter. The fix appears to be in. 

Vanguard Africa director Jeffrey Smith discusses his recent article on the threat of state-led mass killing in The Gambia, as well as concerning events leading up the country's December 1 election. 

The Gambia is a small country in western Africa. It’s a narrow sliver on the ocean, surrounded by Senegal. It has a population of under 2 million, and according to my guest today, Jeffrey Smith, it is the worst dictatorship you have never heard of.

In Uganda, which is consistently ranked as “partly free” among global press freedom groups, journalists are given general free rein so long as their work does not undermine Museveni’s power, particularly during an election season. Of course, the reality is more complicated. 

"The worst dictatorship you've never heard of" is in a small country where millions of Americans find their "Roots."

Political repression has survived the end of the Cold War and the advent of the internet quite nicely, thank you — just look to Bashar al-Assad’s Syria or Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. Indeed, 2,600 years after its birth in Athens, democracy is having a tougher go of it than one might expect.

Last week, the proposed Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act emerged from the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee with approval. The bill was passed by the Senate last year. If passed by the full House of Representatives and signed into law by the president, it has the potential to offer partial redress to one of the most chilling truths facing journalists today: in 90 percent of cases, the murders of journalists go unpunished.

Hundreds of people have been calling for electoral reform and political change in the Gambia ahead of presidential election, which will be held on 1 December. Despite the arrests of activists and opposition members when protests erupted on 14 April, people are still taking to the streets of capital Banjul – where demonstrations are rare – demanding change in the West African nation.

In a place where disappearances and torture are common, brave individuals are taking to the streets.

Activists have called for the United Nations to revoke Mr. Sarr's credence and have him recalled by Banjul.