COMMENTARY
Lt. Col. Sarr Raises Eyebrows Over Dead Ghanaians In The Gambia
Dear Editor,
I am once again tempted to take up a subject but with that weary feeling of a sailor sailing against the wind. It resembles my previous piece suggesting a “SABARRY” approach for the jailed journalists, which seemed to have fallen on the deaf ears of the lawyers. It is my understanding that they have instead appealed the case with the resilience to continue the battle in The Gambia Court of Appeal, the “Nyancho” style, (supposedly) than pleading for mercy. Well, what can I say or do other than to rest my case with the battered sentiment of a loser this time. But it is helpful to remember that after the 1994 Rwandan genocide, peace and reconciliation was successfully sought by merely having killers to come before their victims’ families and say, “I am sorry for killing your husband, wife, or family members”. That alone was enough to ease the pain and allow diehard enemies to co-exist again in a forgiving atmosphere. It is not cowardly or a lack of pride but a dynamic mechanism to forge ahead. They knew that pursuing the vindictive approach, something they were always obsessed with, was only going to immerse the society into a bloodier conflict with more lives wasted for no satisfactory consequences. That’s why I believe in the power of apologizing when nothing else works or makes sense anymore, especially in the treacherous domain of political confrontation. I must stop at that in avoidance of over stretching the subject, if you sense what I mean.
The topic is about the Ghanaians reportedly massacred in The Gambia four years ago. This long lingering story that the Gambian security forces killed several Ghanaians in the Gambia, in 2005 is what I want to place under the microscope. I say several because of my uncertainty of the exact number, which differs in almost all reports published about the incident. When the incident first came to the public’s notice about a day or two after the bodies were discovered at Brufut Beach, around Ghana Town, nine or eight dead men were reportedly found. They were naked and had all their eyes gouged with nothing more explained about their bodily injuries or cause of death. In what therefore seemed like an initial mystery to everybody including the government, the bodies were taken to the Banjul mortuary for identification. In President Jammeh’s last interview, he corroborated that report by underscoring that the victims were taken to the mortuary where his government invited the public, domestic and foreign to help in identifying them. He said that even foreign diplomats of West African nations were invited to the identification parade. And when nobody could help, the government had to authorize their burial.
Masahudu Ankiilu Kunateh, a reporter for Ghanadot, a Ghanaian tabloid, further confirmed in a July article that “while The Gambia government suspected ritual killings to be the case, Ghanaian leaders from both Ghana Town (in The Gambian, population estimated to be about 10,000) and the Ghana Embassy in The Gambia, denied knowing the victims, explaining that they carried no ID cards”. His report concluded that the victims were believed to be six Ghanaians and two other nationals somewhat contradicting the statement that they were unidentifiable for lack of ID cards. He even added that The Gambia government had agreed to compensate the families of the victims in a deal consummated by the foreign Ministers of both countries. The following paragraph was copied verbatim from the article, revealing another special development in the case: The Report of the UN-ECOWAS Fact Finding Team, commissioned on August 14, 2008 at the request of the governments of The Gambia and Ghana, acknowledged that the "The Gambia is not directly or indirectly complicit in the deaths and disappearances of the Ghanaian nationals concerned."
Nevertheless, the Gambian government agreed to make contributions to the families of the six Ghanaians found dead in its territory in conformity with African traditional values shared by both countries. Both Ghana and The Gambia pledged to pursue, through all available means, the arrests and persecution of all those involved in the deaths and disappearances of the Ghanaians and other ECOWAS nationals, especially those identified as culprits in the report.
Both countries agreed to follow up on any other future leads in the case of those suspected missing. The Report recognized that the dead and the disappeared were victims of a human trafficking scam and because of the regional dimension of the problem, both governments called on ECOWAS member states, with the support of the international community, to intensify efforts to identify and punish known traffickers.
The two governments commended the facilitation of the UN and the ECOWAS and the work of the fact-finding team. They expressed optimism that the findings of the report and the implementation of the decisions of their meeting would help to restore and strengthen the traditional cordial bilateral relations between the two countries.
From a different perspective however, the external online Gambian newspapers known for their dissenting views with the Jammeh government came up with the first report indicating that the dead men were Ghanaians and that they were killed by members of the Gambian security forces. The reason given was that they were suspected of being foreign mercenaries contracted to overthrow the APRC government. Then from nine, the number increased to forty-four Ghanaians and nine other West African nationals. Since then, the number has been published in different newspapers abroad with figures changing from Forty-four and nine, forty-four and six to forty-four and five. The Gambian press has been throughout silent in this one except if I missed publications from them over the issue. You never know. But according to the foreign media, the victims were regular West African migrant workers on their usual boat adventures to reach the Mediterranean shores of Europe. These adventures as we know them are not only risky in that they often cause the drowning of hundreds of young men and women and even children from overloaded capsized boats illegally run by unscrupulous traffickers, but passengers loaded are also strictly advised not to travel with ID cards. The fear is that those captured by European immigration officials upon landing at their beaches are immediately deported to their country of origin if their ID cards show where they came from. But without ID cards they stand the chance of claiming asylum and being processed in detention centers for possible acceptance for settlement.
However, the treachery of the sea journey remains a major concern to the passengers because so many of them end up being eaten by sharks and other sea predators when their boats capsize or when some drown. Drowned victims lucky enough to be cast ashore by sea waves or tides are first identified by their fish bites including the gouging of their eyes. Anyway, Marianne Arens filed another damning report about these sea voyages on August 27, 2009 in an article captioned: “Xenophobic immigration policy leads to hundreds of death in the Mediterranean”. This paragraph from the text says it all: “A further 73 African refugees have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea as they attempted to sail from Libya to Italy. According to the UN refugee aid organization, 525 boat refugees died at sea in 2008 and several hundreds have already drowned this year.
Only five refugees from Eritrea—two young men, two boys and a young woman—survived their recent odyssey in a small boat. Their journey took 20 days, one of the survivors reported. A spokesman for the Maltese navy told CNRmedia.com that a German Frontex helicopter had detected seven corpses in Libyan waters thought to have come from the boat.
On Thursday the five exhausted and weakened Eritreans landed on the Italian island of Lampedusa. “We are the only survivors,” they said. The rest of the refugees had died along the way, and their corpses had been thrown into the sea. Several ships had crossed their path, but none of them made any attempt to help. A patrol boat went so far as to give them fuel and rescue vests, but “then they headed off again and left us behind despite our condition.”
Against that background, I couldn’t but ask whether these unidentified victims, nine at most were not washed ashore from a Europe-bound- capsized boat to the Brufut beach in The Gambia and that their identification as Ghanaians had more to do with the close proximity to Ghana Town, the location they were found than the men being actually Ghanaians?
Another missing piece of the puzzle is their names. If nine or better still forty-four Ghanaians were identified, disregarding where the rest of the bodies were taken, I would like to know at least the names of the six whose families were compensated. Because while this case was treated with profound international urgency, not for once did I read anywhere where their names were mentioned or who their family members are. Everything reported about the victims is clouded under an umbrella of nameless victims without home addresses, age brackets or family background. As long as these pertinent issues are absent, convincing anyone about the case of these victims will continue to be elusive to especially the Ghana government or any International organization interested in getting to the root of the “crime”. Of course many would hate to look at it differently other than what is already been established by dissidents that they were men killed by the Gambia government; but from my assessment, the allegations seem predicated purely on prejudice and not solid facts.
Candidly, this makes me feel guilty of being stuck in my old miserable mind-set that only casts a blinding veil over my vision which otherwise would have allowed me to dissect the issue from a more objective outlook. Thank god I have come to terms with everything by freeing myself from an entrapment in my own vision of objectivity, no longer afraid of confronting the truth and above all, cleared the illusion in my mind.
Last month, when President Jammeh made mention of the APRC government’s efforts taken immediately after the bodies were discovered, I almost blamed him for not sharing the information earlier. But my experience as a senior office in the GNA over trying to share high profile legal information under investigation with the public was denounced as totally illegal. In 1996 and 1997, Gambian dissidents determined to overthrow the government respectively attacked Farafenni and Kartong military camps from Senegal. Altogether, nine soldiers were killed in the attack at a time when the dust of the coup has not quite subsided in the country. The attacks were foiled in record rapidity but created an atmosphere of insecurity and fear in the country that we thought was going to negatively impact the tourist industry needed to flourish for the economic health of the country. To alleviate the concerns of the frightened public therefore we had decided to hold a
press conference at the army headquarters broadcasted on TV where the individuals involved and the details of the attack were explained to the public and press. It was all legally wrong because according to the law, cases of that magnitude under investigation could not be treated in the manner we did. They said it was like trying them in the eyes of the public before their actual trial. But it was a situation of what the psychologists term as conflict-conflict approach. Not sensitizing the public about the issue could have cost us serious economic woes; while doing it meant infringing on the legal rights of the accused. If I were confronted with the same dilemma, I would have still done it the same way. It would have been better than gossips being spread around that the attackers were fifty-five in number with fifty killed by the security forces and “dumped in abandoned wells”. Hello!
The captured attackers were however put on trial, found guilty and sentenced to death. They later appealed their cases and got their sentences commuted to life in prison without parole. One died in detention but the rest are still in jail. One thing I can attest to, if we were to execute them, we would rather do it by firing squad than by gouging their eyes.
To convince me therefore that the security forces in The Gambia killed these men I would like anyone with the full knowledge of what happened to share the facts with us. I will however expect the following facts to be included which, I guess, should be available after four years of investigation:
A. The exact number.
B. Their names and ages.
C. Where they come from, state, city, town, village and family?
D. How they were killed and where the rest were hidden other than the nine taken to the Banjul mortuary? And why nine to the mortuary?
E. Who the other nationals killed were and how it was determined that they were not Ghanaians like the others?
If anyone could furnish me with these facts, I will be glad to join the campaign to see that The Gambia government is punished for the crime. But until then, I seriously need a break on this allegation.
I will conclude by drawing the attention of everybody to the special thing we do in the month of Ramadan. It is the month when we congregate at the mosque, usually, and after the nightly prayers, go around shaking everyone’s hand and saying: “Forgive me for my sins against you for I have forgiven you for the sins you have committed against me”. In response the person would say: “Yes I have also forgiven you for your sins committed against me”. And together both would say, “We wish the Almighty God would forgive us for our sins together”. That is the spirit of Ramadan, the month which we were taught that “Satan” the father of all evils is chained and locked in hell throughout the whole fasting period to give peace among humans a chance. It is in that same spirit that I seek forgiveness of all and to sincerely say that I have forgiven everybody who has sinned against me, if there is any at all. I also hope that Almighty god would forgive us all. Amen!
Next week, I will take up the subject of The Gambia National Army as one of the finest forces in the sub-region or the whole continent under the leadership of Generals Tamba, Masanneh Kinteh, Yankuba Drammeh, Omar Mbye, Fofana, etc. This one is going to be a mind-blowing narrative; trust me. Combining it with this topic would have drawn me into a rather elaborate writing, which I am trying to avoid by all means possible.
Cheers!
Samsudeen Sarr,
Newark, New Jersey.
Lt. Colonel Samsudeen Sarr (Rtd.)