Entering The Gambia as a journalist is ill-advised.

This tiny West African country, nestled within Senegal, a may be inconspicuous on the map but it is a world leader on abuses of press freedom.

During President Jammeh’s 15 year reign he has executed a carefully crafted attack on freedom of expression.

I was recently in The Gambia, and I went to speak to some journalists at The Point, the leading oppositon newspaper. The paper was noticed by the international media in 2004 when its editor-in-chief and joint-founder, Deydra Hydara, was assassinated on the eve of the newspaper’s 13th anniversary. His murder has yet to be solved. In December 2006 the paper was awarded an International Press Freedom Award in Germany.

The opposition journalists, while being very pleased to see me, were very guarded in what they said to me. We spoke a lot about my experiences as a journalist in the UK, and as they decided that I was who I said I was, they began to open up.

They spoke of the difficult conditions under which they work: the ambiguous media laws that can be used to silence them at President Jammeh’s whim. The other newspapers published in The Gambia exacerbate the problem. Mostly government owned, the newspapers act as a mouth-pieces for pro-Jammeh propaganda. Editorials, titled “Another positive move”, praise Jammeh in hyperbole, and letters titled “Congraluations, Mr President” applaud Jammeh with such sycophantic words that it is hard to understand how anyone could believe it.

But people do. Talk to most Gambians and they will be full of praise of their president, who has provided them with 3 roads in his 15 years in power. “Because human development is stagnant,” one of The Point’s editors told me. Though a carefully orchestrated suppression of the opposition, a healthy propaganda mill and the prohibitive taxes on telecommunications that prevent any company from setting up decent internet, Jammeh is keeping the population of that tiny West African nation just stupid enough to prevent revolution.

I spent 2 weeks in The Gambia, and was left with the distinct impression that it was slowly going to collapse in on itself, not dramatically, but quietly, like a house of cards. And, suppression of free speech will be one of the biggest contributing factors to the collapse.

Jammeh’s propaganda is far-reaching
A billboard welcoming Lybia’s President Gadhafi: “Welcome brother leader Moamar Gadhafi leader of the revolution & chairman of the african union & king of kings of Africa”

Imagine a world where you can be sued for what you say on your blog. We are one step closer to that world today after a landmark ruling in New York that has forced Google to disclose the identity of an anonymous blogger who called the 37 year-old Canadian model Liskula Cohen a ‘skank’.

Cohen sought legal action against Google after a torrent of abusive comments were made on the Skanks in NYC blog. Cohen now plans to launch a libel case against the no longer anonymous blogger.

This is a worrying new development in the on-going war for online privacy. At a time when many in the supposed developed world are critical of the likes of Iran, China and Egypt for suppressing bloggers and access to social networking sites such as twitter, I think that what is happening quietly under our noses is of equal, if not greater, concern.