Fatim Badjie Betrays Memories of April 10th &11th

By Lamin Jatta

As we remember the 14 young men gunned down in an orgy of gunfire by the trigger happy security forces of our country, we should put in perspective that the 25-year-old new Information Secretary Ms. Fatim Badjie was a student at The Gambia Senior Secondary School during the time of the demonstration and the probability is that she too, participated in that incident. As a student at the time, there were chances that she could have been slain like any other of her colleagues slaughtered in cold blood in those fateful two days of bloodshed. Some of the victims of the excesses of the security forces never actively partook in the demonstrations but fell victim when the security forces went out in town on a killing rampage shooting enmass.

It is a naked act of depravity that Gambian President Yahya Jammeh would appoint a young lady as Secretary of state who could have been killed during the reign of terror and ruthlessness the APRC government subjected Gambian school children to on April 10 and 11, 2000. Our own security forces went out on the rampage randomly shooting at crowds of students as if they were in a simulated war field. This excessive display of lethality and cruelty make me wonder whether the Gambian security forces know that it is a violation of all international norms to kill even unarmed combatants at war let alone students just venting out their anger in the streets. All those murderers of school children should realized that not only did they break the hearts of mothers and every sane Gambian but they have denied our country of young people who eight years later in their young lives could have serves as Secretaries of States of the Republic of The Gambia. If the President did not get it up to this point, some of us are making the point that the 14 kids his government cut down in those two consecutive days would have made better security chiefs, Presidents, religious leaders than currant status quo. The kids that the Jammeh regime slew laid their lives for justice. Our Imams of today instead of preaching justice are comporting themselves in a manner that most believe is abetting injustice in our country. Likewise, if they were security chiefs or our President they would have rather died than condone injustice on Gambians. Yes, to kill one kid could have been a mistake, but when you killed one, two, and three, up to 12 and yet you don’t see that what you are doing is insane, but to continue the killing spree for the second consecutive day in our small Gambia is a gross and vicious act of cowardice.

Therefore, Fatim’s acceptance to work as the Secretary of state for a regime that slaughtered 14 of her colleagues for merely protesting against Yahya jammeh’s injustice is a classical betrayal of trust, confidence and all the lofty principles that all those young men of courage laid their precious lives for. Even more despicable is that Fatim chose to work as an image maker of a regime that not only lied that the students killed themselves but took the deliberate move to indemnify the security personnel who perpetrate these colossal atrocities unheard of in recent history. I know for certain that the souls of these young innocent men, and Omar Barrow as well as Deyda Hydara who was killed three years later; would be appalled at the ghoulish posture of Fatim Badjie who willingly agreed to work as the image maker for a government that has taken the brutal decision to cut all these lives short and has denied them the justice they laid their lives for. Fatim’s hand now is equally dripping with the blood of her martyred comrades, as are those of the President, Vice President Isatou Njie Saidy, Ann Therese Ndong Jatta who shameless lied to the world about the utterly criminal character of this nefariously rogue regime; and all those who brought this grieve to our nation. These children and men laid their lives so that no more schoolgirls like Fatim herself get raped or killed by the security forces without justice. Ironically, the same security forces accused of the crimes that ignited the student demonstrations, were sent to clamp down on them with a heavy hand.

Madam Secretary Badjie, Jammeh made it clear at your swearing in ceremony when he said secretaries of states come and get fired but the Vice president Isatou Njie-Saidy is serving for her11th years. If you don’t know what Jammeh is talking about; he meant that secretaries of State must act like they are all his robots when they work for him. Meaning must be willing to take part in his reign of ruthlessness on Gambains like they do not have any fiber of empathy in their soul.  This is to say the Vice President was used as a front to lie to the whole world that students killed themselves during the demonstrations. “Contrary to the erroneous belief that the shooting started from the security forces on the ground, it is confirmed that in fact the shooting started from within the demonstrators, since the security forces only had blank ammunitions, tear gas, batons and shields at the time,” Vice President Isatou Njie Saidy was quoted verbatim in the wake of the April 10 atrocities. And just recently this lady walking on the same footing that is keeping her in office is used again to introduce a Bill to the National Assembly that amended a backward colonial Act of 1922 to send people on life imprisonment for any unauthorized disclosure of so called official information. How about the President’s so called “treatment” of poor naked women and men in the full glare of television cameras? The government should be run transparently but poor and unsuspecting people should not be undressed and humiliated in the name of what ever you want to call it. The APRC government is always missing their priorities. It is a crime to leak a patient’s record let alone parade the patients before the cameras.