Terrified of the activities of the former minister of information and Gambian dissidents who have made their intentions clear to end impunity in the Gambia; the Jammeh government rushed to issue an indictment and an arrest warrant for Dr. Amadou Scattred Janneh for distributing T-shirts in Senegal. Dr. Janneh and colleagues were in Senegal distributing T-shirts at the border village of Karang calling for an end to Yahya Jammeh’s dictatorial regime in Banjul. He was briefly detained with activist Seedy Ceesay but both were later released unconditionally.
The rush to indict Dr. Janneh before a court of law in the Gambia is laughable and a desperate move Gambians have seen over and over again by a nervous and insecure regime on the brink of collapse. The Jammeh regime which has been extremely panicky due to recent events in the West African State of Burkina Faso is on high alert in fear that the same scenario may be replicated in the Gambia as citizens continue to face arbitrary arrest, torture and enforced disappearance. As more and more citizens begin to openly express their frustration with this government on social media, through defection and revelation of Jammeh’s inner workings to the online media, the government is hoping by indicting Dr. Janneh in absentia citizens would be scared to make any noise.
The indictment filed before the court by the Inspector General of police on treason charges and the presiding magistrate’s entertainment of the state’s request and ordered the arrest of Amadou Scattered Janneh should not be a surprise either. Consistently the Jammeh government has used the police; the NIA and the courts to arrest citizens detain them in notorious prison Mile II without bail and charge them before a court of law remote controlled by the Justice department and the State House. Almost always such cases resort to conviction of these citizens without fair trial or representation. These tactics of hiding behind the justice system to arrest, prosecute and jail citizens has been going on for 20 years and Gambians have had enough of it.
Dr. Janneh’s indictment and arrest warrant lacks merit in any competent court of law especially given the fact that his alleged offense is committed in a foreign country. What authority does Gambia has in Senegalese territory to charge someone of a crime for expressing his universal human rights and freedom of expression? This only portrays Gambia’s justice system as a laughing stock around the world validating critics’ claims that Gambia is a breeding ground for gross human rights violations.
What President Jammeh and his government failed to realized is that the wind of change is blowing fast across Africa. Gambians have been subjected to the same intimidation and cruelty for far too long. People have had enough and are beginning to resist the blatant violations on their basic fundamental freedom and human rights. Patience and peaceful as Gambians may be, their backs are against the wall and there is no place to go but to resist the system. From ordinary citizens; former government employees, students, security personnel and even judges and magistrates are beginning to resist the system. It has become evidence that there is no personal or job security in Gambia. It is do as I say not as I do or damn if you do and damn if you don’t.
To end Jammeh’s madness that has not spared any citizen in Gambia, people need to realize that they can only indict and arrest few citizens at a time. If there were to be hundreds of Amadou Jannehs standing tall and resisting the system, how many people can they indict at any given time? Imagine having five hundred people demanding justice for their fellow citizens, imagine one thousand people standing together and demanding that enough is enough? Imagine political party leaders, civil society leaders, students, and civil servants walking out of their offices from Brikama to Banjul, summer to Basse, Farafenni to Bara demanding that Gambian citizens be treated with respect and dignity by their government?
Yahya Jammeh and his people are not fools and they are terrified of what may come out of years of brutality on innocent citizens. Their every move is geared towards suppressing the collective feeling of the chronic pain they have imposed on an innocent populace. Thus the selective arrest, torture and dismissal of citizens from their jobs in the name of fighting corruption is simply a scheme designed to numb citizens from feeling the pains of their fellow Gambians. This paranoia among our citizens to protect the interest and security of one man and a few unruly citizens must be understood among our people to put a final end to years of dehumanizing our people. We can no longer afford to wait for any more citizens to become victims of a pariah culture of oppression that is foreign to our beloved nation. Gambians should therefore demand that we all be indicted along with Amadou Janneh and many innocent citizens who continue to languish in Jail. The moral responsibility of restoring sanity and dignity and freedom for our citizens lies in each and every one of us.
As U.S President FDR once said “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. The things that Gambians have historically feared the most; Humiliation in front of families and neighbors, arrest, detention and torture publicly, rapping and indecent exposure of our mothers/fathers and young women, violence and division among our families, being strip of our inheritance of personal property left by our parents, among many others are all happening to our fellow citizens today by nobody but our government. What else does a man have to live for if we cannot protect our freedom, rights, dignity and everything we have worked for in our lives?
By Demba Baldeh