Commentary
Detention of a Freedom Fighter
By Foday Samateh, New York
Hon. Halifa Sallah, Gambian Human Rights Crusader, Politician & Sociologist
Nothing about Yahya Jammeh can shock me anymore. You know you have reached the nadir of contempt for someone when you are not alarmed when he assigns hirelings and underlings to accuse defenseless innocent citizens of being “witches” and drag them from their homes. For all those who like to pretend there is rule of law in The Gambia, well, Yahya Jammeh has once more raised the curtain on his unending series of bizarre ignominious dramas to portray himself as a superhuman: a visionary president with supernatural powers. But that’s enough of this charlatan with the despotic bent and monarchical ambition.
Since everyone is entitled to choose their own hero, I am proud to have long since chosen Halifa Sallah, about whom there is a lot to admire and respect. It’s not complicated. And there is nothing to rationalize. I say to his critics, show me your heroes when our nation needed them at this dark time. I can make this dare because nobody will come out to challenge it. There is only one Northern Star in the firmament of lesser lights.
There is a big difference between conviction and pretension, but this only becomes apparent to the world in what Thomas Paine calls “the times that try men’s souls.” However, we don’t mind critics and criticism because these come with the territory of standing up for what is right. When they level empty or manufactured allegations against our heroes, we remember with a smile that critics of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once derided him as “Martin Loser King.” Malcolm X’s critics branded him a “black nationalist” and a “hate preacher.” Mandela’s critics labeled him a “terrorist” for spearheading a sabotage campaign to bring down Apartheid. Lumumba’s critics marked him as a “communist” for his audacity to stand up to colonial Belgium, and lest we forget, Nkrumah’s critics maligned him as a self-purported “god.” So, enough of the critics … until they have something really meaningful to say.
The crux of this article is the arrest and detention of Sallah. The paranoid machinery, which passes for the Gambian government, charged him before a puppet magistrate thus:
Count One: “Halifa Sallah…with intent to provoke the breach of the peace organized public meetings (in the village of Makumbaya) to challenge the government policy of screening witches and made remarks which he knew by such inciting remarks a breach of peace was likely to be occasioned and thereby committed an offence.”
Count Two: “Halifa Sallah…with intent to cause or bring hatred, contempt or to excite disaffection against the person of the President or the Government of the Gambia organized public meetings (in Makumbaya) in which he made some inciting remarks challenging the government policy on screening of witches and thereby committed an offence.”
Count three: “Halifa Sallah…with intent to cause breach of public peace assembled a meeting of the local residents (of Makumbaya) challenging the government policy on screening of witches thereby committed an offence.”
Count four: “Halifa Sallah…with intent to incite people to disobey a lawful order of the president and challenging the government policy on screening of witches organized meetings (in Makumbaya) and thereby committed an offence.”
Count five: “Halifa Sallah for purposes prejudicial to the safety and interest of the Gambia recorded and collected information from various individuals (read “witches” and their families in Makumbaya) which information may be directly or indirectly useful to an enemy and thereby committed an offence.”
Now you know that your country is in deep dirt when counts like these are generated by minds that run the affairs of state. Nothing irritates like incompetent, inferior thinking, and when you point it out you are charged with intellectual arrogance. But if the arresting officers, the prosecuting officers, and the magistrate are not simpletons, if they are not corrupt lackeys, if they are not abject cowards, why didn’t they all turn in their resignation letters instead of being a party to this judicial malpractice, this abuse of civil rights and this encroachment of personal liberty?
You see, just like a president, a dictator is an institution where the leader creates the mindset, which permeates down to the lowest rank in the establishment. No dictator has ever gone out on his own to arrest, detain, prosecute, convict, jail or assassinate his opponents and foes. He always has to get someone else to do that for him. Without cooperation, compliance or loyalty to carry out unlawful or abusive orders, dictatorship will be impossible. So, more than a few people are complicit in any single crime of a dictator, either by being accessories, surrogates or mercenaries. That’s why the learned judges in the Nuremberg Trials rightly rejected the defense of Hitler’s officers that they were innocent of the Nazi War Crimes by claiming that they were merely “obeying orders”. Those who arrested Sallah or the so-called “witches” or any other innocent Gambian on any other occasion bear all of the responsibility for taking part in these authoritarian acts. Their defense for immunity or rationalization cannot be that they were “obeying an order”, because these orders are clearly reprehensible and unlawful, if not outright criminal. If a government cannot resolve people’s problems, it must not make their lives harder by infringing upon their rights or dignity.
Let’s pause here for an important digression, which is where are all those politicians who boast about their popularity with the people in the run up to every election? Where are they now when the people need them? It turns out that the best protest they can stage is to release a carefully worded statement to get their names in the news, and they surely didn’t disappoint on that score! Their expedience was fully expected. We have always known that they prefer their cozy homes to the petty dictator’s prison he brags about as his “five-star hotel” for opponents. There is a huge gulf between celebrity and greatness. The former can be a gift of mere luck or the result of a show of pretension, whereas the latter is a credential earned by trial of character and conviction. And here we leave election-season politicians and go to the soul of the matter.
Sallah has been arrested four times since Yahya Jammeh came to power on the back of a military coup in 1994. The first time was with Sidia Jatta, his fellow veteran in the trenches shortly after the coup of publishing FOROYAA as what the junta called a “political’ newspaper in contravention of the infamous Decree No. 4. Just as the greats of the deposed Jawara crowd cowered and scurried away into hiding, or surrendered to the newly self-imposed dispensation, and every other public figure pleaded silence at the sight of men brandishing guns, Sallah and Jatta stood up for their rights and prepared to be martyrs rather than prisoners of their conscience. But it wasn’t a challenge that Sallah wanted, because that would have been about him, and he has never been about himself.
The criticisms then were “give the junta a chance”, and people said that it was too soon to demand that the new lords of the nation live by their own reasons and pronouncements for overthrowing a democratically-elected government, albeit a useless one. How foolish the critics now look with hindsight!
The second time Sallah was arrested was in 1996 with the editors of other independent newspapers on fictitious allegations that they were in violation of some media registration law. Again, in spite of standing up for his rights, it wasn’t the challenge he wanted because that, too, was about him. The third time was in 2006, when he was arrested along with Hamat Bah and Omar Jallow on some imaginary seditious charges after the political opposition parties formed the National Alliance for Democracy and Development. As expected he threw down the gauntlet at the regime until it backed down and withdrew the unfounded charges. But again, it was about him standing up for his rights, something that is just not his thing.
Anyone who has the faintest idea about Sallah, or has met him, will bear me out. He is never about himself. He will never win a popularity contest in the rank of our nation’s elites and society types, because he is not about what they cherish most: status and privilege. His political convictions are rooted in the gospel of democracy and, in spite of what his critics would have you believe, his life and work are spent on creating a democratic Gambia. Like every man he is not perfect, but his integrity has never been questioned, and he has never been found wanting in the service of his beliefs. While he has a lot going for him personally, he gives it all up to speak for the voiceless, strive for rule of law and challenge the establishment on behalf of the public good. That’s why this fourth arrest was different. This wasn’t about him. It was about the people he volunteered to serve and thus this time, every day he spent in detention in Mile Two Maximum Security Prison, the place ceased to be a facility of law enforcement for criminals and became a Bastille or a Robin Island. For Sallah, this deliberate encounter with a paranoid dystopian state, which led to his arrest and detention, was a necessary rite of pilgrimage to the Mount Rushmore of freedom fighters. It was the man and the moment meeting.
To know a man is simple. Just look at the men he admires. Look at Sallah’s zeal when he talks about Nkrumah’s plan for African Union and industrialization, Sheikh Anta Diop’s vast reservoir of knowledge, Fanon’s outrage at the condition of the “Wretched of the Earth”, Mandela going to Robin Island Prison as a price for fighting for a democratic South Africa, Steve Biko’s enlightened movement of Black Consciousness, Edward Francis Small’s pioneering fight for our nation’s independence from Britain, and of course, how he loves to quote over and over again Lumumba’s prison letter to his wife: “It’s not I that matters, it is the Congo.”
Now even those less familiar with Sallah will appreciate why he stood up in Brikama Magistrates Court and declared “No one should cry for me. I know what I was doing and I know what it could lead to. If I have to go to jail or die for the freedom of others, then I am prepared to be the sacrificial lamb. I will not ask any retired military personnel to bail me, because I am a democrat and I don’t want to associate myself with undemocratic practices. I prefer being in jail than sitting outside and watching people’s rights being violated by others.”
Sallah understands what Dr. King underscored as a civil rights leader, which is that prominent figures have to stand up for their nameless fellow citizens in moments of crisis to “dramatize a shameful condition” and give it unflattering publicity. That was why
Dr. King refused to be another privileged preacher confined to giving heavenly sermons in a church while the congregation endured the hell of segregation. That was why, instead of basking in his fame and hanging out with the famous, Dr. King joined the Poor People’s Campaign of the sanitation workers for better working conditions, when he was assassinated.
Sallah came out for citizens accused of being “witches” by their own government simply to give the stone-age shameful practice media attention with the aim of stopping it, and his arrest and detention caught fire, and the world media flew with the incredible story of “witch hunting” in 21st century Gambia. His biggest success might be formally tying Yahya Jammeh and his government to this scandalous balderdash. In their haste to demonstrate their slavish loyalty to their draconian master Yahya Jammeh’s legal emissaries went on record in court brazenly charging Sallah with showing “intent to cause or bring hatred, contempt or to excite disaffection against the person of the President or the Government of the Gambia… challenging the government policy on screening of witches and thereby committing an offence.” In five versions they repeated this drivel, this nonsense for the whole world to see!
You couldn’t make this stuff up. Here is a freedom fighter. Now…where are the others?