By Mathew K Jallow, Associate Editor
Senegambia News.
The continued detention of 75 Gambian deportees from Spain is one of the most egregious pieces of news for the week. Gambians everywhere want to know why deportees should be held in detention after the ordeal they already went through in their deportation process. This is yet another manifestation of Yahya Jammeh’s abuse of power, and his total disregard for our laws? The fact that deportees who have committed no crime should be held in detention makes no sense whatsoever. The deportees ought to be made accessible to the Red Cross and legal practitioners who might be interested in securing their freedom. But additionally, the judiciary should verify that the detainees are really in detention, because we can no longer trust anything that this government says. After claims of the escape of Daba Marenah and five other officers last year, when in reality the government had executed them, and the brutal murder of forty-four Ghanaians, and government’s cover-up of this heinous crime, we will never again take the government for its word. The continued callous and cowardly incarceration of innocent Gambians whose only crime is having been deported from a foreign land is unacceptable. These Gambians who left to go better themselves overseas did not enjoy peace in Spain and now their own government is not allowing them the peace and freedom they should take for granted in their own country. Meanwhile, two weeks ago, Immigrations officials told reporters that all the deportees had been released the same day they were held for questioning by the authorities. This has turned out to be a blatant lie designed to confuse and misinform Gambians about the whereabouts of the deportees. What cruel injustice?!!
The relentlessness and focus given by the Gambian press to the mass genocidal murder of forty-four Ghanaian immigrants is finally paying off. It now appears that the Ghanaian press and government are taking a cue from our press to put pressure on Yahya Jammeh to explain the massacre of their nationals in our country. President John Kaffour of Ghana did appear disinterested in these genocidal murders, but now apparently the Ghanaian press is over the matter and is demanding answers. Yahya Jammeh must now explain why even when his government believed the Ghanaians were part of an insurgency; they were not tried once they were in custody. Was bludgeoning them, and blowing their brains out, the proper way to deal with incapacitated prisoners who could offer no resistance, whatsoever? Jammeh has a lot of hard questions to answer to the Ghanaian people, the Gambian people, to ECOWAS member states, A.U. and the U.N. We know about the forty-four Ghanaians murdered in cold-blood, but there was an additional ten people who were murdered at the same time, and the question is of what nationalities were they. Did Jammeh also kill Senegalese nationals in the genocide that he ordered which exterminated between forty-four and forty-nine Ghanaians under the false pretext they were suspected of being insurgents? As we get answers for some of the mysteries that have baffled us for so long, such as the brutal murder of Koro Ceesay and others, we are confident some decent Gambians within the security forces who have the answers to these questions will come forward to tell us what they know. Meanwhile, Ghanaian Foreign Minister Kwesi Osei Adjei is scheduled to travel to Senegal with a delegation, which includes detectives and forensic experts to try to get answers from Jammeh and his killing machines. It is incumbent upon every Gambian both civilian and in any of the services, to tell the Ghanaian investigators what they know of this case. If for personal security reasons it is not possible to make contact with the investigating team, anyone with the smallest information even if it is not based on first hand knowledge, can write and tell any of the numerous online Gambian papers. If our fellow Gambians suffer such brutality as these innocent Ghanaians did in our country, we will also want and demand answers from any country that did it to our citizens. So let us be courageous and tell our sides of the story.
Freedom News.
The trial, sentencing and incarceration of those tried for alleged involvement in an alleged coup attempt marks another dark chapter in our history. The group of about eight decent Gambians was unfairly sent to prisons for sentences ranging from 10 years to 20 years. It can be recalled that several months ago, many other former military officers and civilians security personnel were sentenced and forced to serve long periods behind bars. In all, over the past several years, scores of Gambians have been condemned to spend the greater part of the rest of their lives in Yahya Jammeh’s prisons. Since Jammeh came to power, he has introduced and entrenched a culture of incarcerating people of different political prisoners. Today, the whole country is dotted with jails and prisons, and people arrested in one part of the country are continually moved from one end of the country to the other and family members are not permitted to ask about, much less visit with their detained relatives. The jails and prisons have become the answer to Jammeh’s every problem and the horrendous failure of his government. The Gambia has been turned into a police state, and police stations are located all over the country and even in places one would never expect them.
Foroyaa.
Foroyaa’s efforts to make Yahya Jammeh rethink his plans to build a Science Academy in Kanilai will fall on deaf ears. Yahya Jammeh is not one capable of rationalizing serious or even trivial matters, because he has the intelligence of an amoeba. From day one, Yahya Jammeh has been set on a wrong trajectory, and like the ever-expanding universe, he is unstoppable. There may be many nefarious things in Jammeh’s dull brain, but rationalization is not one of them.
The inability to complete a monument dedicated to Edward Francis Small around the Gamtel roundabout is rather disgraceful. For all Mr. Small did for our country, he deserves better. But this issue raises another question. Why should Gamtel resources be spent rebuilding the roundabout in the first place? The roundabout is under the jurisdiction of Banjul City Council, as is the erection of Edward Francis Small’s monument. Where are the city Council funds going?
The death in police custody of a civilian as reported by Foroyaa is rather disheartening. During thirty years of Jawara’s government, there had never been a case where detainees died in police custody, but the incidences of death under mysterious circumstances, of persons in police custody has become rampant under Jammeh’s regime. The death in police custody of a student in Kombo Brikama in 2000, prompted a national student demonstration that ended when police and paramilitary gunned down and massacred twelve students in cold-blood. Where is the accountability? Are the lives of people worth nothing? Who will pay for these deaths?
Gambia Journal.
Jammeh’s donation of dozens of motorbikes to the Police Force, put in the context of Jammeh’s penchant for associating himself with many past donations to government institutions, speaks volumes. From vehicles to motorbikes to bicycles, rice, and large sums of cash, Jammeh seems to be the only person who has money to give. Jammeh is depleting our national coffers as he uses our financial resources to bribe and buy favors with individuals and organizations that he perceives as able to promote his agenda of staying in power. Whatever happened to institutional budgets that project departmental and institutional needs and prepare budgets requests for funding from government? Did the Gambia Police Force budget for the Jammeh’s donated motorbikes in terms of gas purchase and maintenance and upkeep?
Katim Touray, Commissioner M.I.D., and Yoro Mballow, M.P. Lower Fulladou, have shown how disgusting they are by organizing the people to slave on Jammeh’s farms. Why should the people of Fulladou work for free when they should be using every ounce of energy on farming for themselves and their families? Touray and Mballow who are supposed to know better, are instead coercing the poor provincial person to work for free for Jammeh who already has billions of our Dalasis in his private bank accounts. But, even in Banjul, poor people around the Kombos Fonis, and civil servants of all ranks, shamefully travel to Kanilai to work on Jammeh’s farms and other project. Everything Jammeh has in Kanilai, from his palace to his extensive farm holding belongs to the people of our country.
The editorial of the paper on August 13th, 2007, indicts various African governmental organizations for absolutely dropping the ball on the massacre of innocent Ghanaians. In fact as the editorial indicates, during the last A.U. Conference held in Gambia, delegates which includes Ghana’s President, were housed close to where the corpses of the murdered Ghanaians were discovered. Jammeh deliberately displayed some of these dead bodies where they would be found as a strategy and a tactic for intimidation of Gambians who may plan to oust him. But, the slowness of the Ghanaian authorities to react and to give this matter all urgency it deserves was rather perplexing. My own speculation of the Ghana government’s slowness to react to the killings points to a possible bribery of the President of Ghana, John Kaffour and or his former Minister of Foreign Affairs, by Yahya Jammeh possibly to the tune of millions of dollars. This is not a fact, only my way of finding an answer to the bizarre and confounding response or lack of it, to genocidal murder of so many innocent Ghanaians.
The Point.
Spain’s attempt to preempt the tide of immigration from The Gambia has the wrong solution. Putting one million dollars in the hands of Jammeh to help stem immigration is like throwing meat into the mouth of a hungry lion. Not a single dime will be used stop immigration, and the only way Jammeh will stop the masses of unemployed youth from leaving the country is by locking them up. Spain should invest in job creating factories and industries so the young people can be gainfully employed. As long as African’s raw materials continue to create employment for the west, instead of building factories and industries that will enable Africans to refine and manufacture their raw materials, young Africans will not stop following the jobs to the West.
Magistrate Moses Richards threat to drop the charge in the case against Tapha Leigh and Boto Construction is a courageous one. Like the cases of Fatou Jaw-Manneh and former Banjul mayor, Pa Sallah Jeng, this case too promises to drag on and on unless sanity was brought to bear. The government’s only desire in pursuing these cases and all other cases is to punish what it perceives as anti Jammeh people or people who fall out of favor with Yahya Jammeh. The court system in any country is not set as a retribution and revenge mechanism, but rather as a system of dispensing justice.
Gainako.
Lamin Bayo, who is supposedly in Boston, has ignited a debate in Gainako, which has attracted some fair amount of support for his position, but this is not to say there are no contrarian views. But, what Lamin Bayo and his supporters want is for the media to turn their attention to taling taling stories of “the cat chasing the rabbit from the house, the rabbit ran as fast as his long hind legs could carry him, and then he entered his hole under the tree. Well, this is not going to happen, EVER. We will continue to write about the stories that come out of The Gambia no matter how unpalatable they may be to some people. We are not here to write what anyone wants to hear or read. We write what we ourselves want to hear and read. After all everyone who disagrees with what we write, can start their own online newspaper and create their own medium to contradict us. These days this is so easy to do fellows. There is also a pro-Jammeh online paper out there, which no one ever reads. You can take your views there and they will accept and publish them. Sorry, but I cannot even remember the name of that paper now. But, I think Yankuba Jambang’s response to Lamin Bayo ratings was right on the money, and speaking for the Echo, who gives a hoot what someone out there thinks or rates us as. For us, it was a wasteful exercise of Mr. Bayo’s money, time and energy, The Echo is changing not a darn thing- Nothing, Nada, Haihunde, Hanifeng, Dara.
Allgambian.net.
The Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) debate has raged on for a number of years, and although success in stopping and eradicating the practice from our cultures is slow, gains are being made. This is will not be an easy thing to stop for obvious reasons; the intransigence of elders and traditionalists who can never be convinced otherwise. I sincerely believe the African union can either write into law the eradication of the practice, or each country’s National Assembly can enact a law banning the practice. In any case, this cultural tradition should be stopped in the interest of preserving the health of our females.