Fatou Jaw Manneh is a journalist and commentator from The Gambia. She fled the country after the 1994 coup d’état that brought dictator Yahya Jammeh to power. Manneh obtained political asylum in the United States and continued to publish articles exposing the tyranny of Jammeh’s regime. In 2007, on a visit to the Gambia to pay her respects to her late father, Manneh was arrested and charged with three counts of sedition for articles published in newspapers shuttered by the regime. She was convicted and sentenced to four years of hard labor or a fine of $12,000. Manneh managed to pay the fine and escape to the United States, where she founded Maafanta.com, a website that focuses on politics, health, and education in The Gambia.
