The Gambian government has accused Washington and former colonial power Britain of leading a "shameless campaign of lying" against it, four days after its shock withdrawal from the Commonwealth.
The tiny west African nation, which is flanked on both sides by Senegal, on Wednesday stunned the 54-country bloc with the announcement it was leaving what it called a "neo-colonial" institution.
In a statement read on state media on Saturday, the government lashed out at its "enemies" who it said had concocted lies about its human rights record.
The statement said Britain and the United States had backed "so-called Gambians to set up organisations and media facilities to spread nothing but lies against The Gambia by making false, outrageous and unfounded statements about the state of human rights."
President Yahya Jammeh, who has ruled the country since 1994, is often pilloried for rights abuses and the muzzling of journalists. However members of the diaspora have set up vocal and critical news outlets against Banjul.
The statement said that Gambia's human rights record was "much better" than that of Britain and the United States.
"The British government has been masterminding this campaign against The Gambia and despite the fact that we are independent they still continue to treat us as their colonial subjects.
"Certainly the British Empire was founded by extraordinary brutality and the massive looting and shedding of the blood of Africans, Asians and others. Its only legacy is exploitation."
Meanwhile it slammed the United States as a country "lifted from backwardness, poverty and violence to superpower status as well as the largest economy in the world by the sweat, blood and tears of millions of African slaves."
