By Modou C Nyang
Is another April 10th and 11th, Fifteen years on the Count, the assurance to ensure Justice looks in impossible? As we (the Gambians) marks the 15th anniversary of the April 10 and 11 student demo this year which was brutally suppressed by the Gambian own security forces, resulting in the deaths of more than 14 innocent Gambian children and the maiming of several more, We the aggrieved comrades, relatives and friends of those innocent young souls are still waiting for justice. We request the Government of the Gambia to implement its security obligation of ensuring that the outcomes of the commission of inquiries are fully implemented without favor or affectionate.
The lives of the fallen were not objects but human souls that stood up for justices. Demanding for what is right and calling for the respect of rule of Law. It is 15 years since our own Gambia Security forces who supposed to protect us massacred our colleagues, friends and school mates before our eyes. To me it seems as if it happened yesterday as it is still fresh in my mind and that of most Gambians, especially those who lost their loved ones and those who are still nursing the wounds of their offspring who had been abandoned to their fate.
The memories of those little souls who were brutally shot and killed in cold blood for merely coming out to exercise their most fundamental rights to peacefully match and show their grievances, will never fade away from our hearts and minds as people of conscience who care about humanity and the crave for justice.
I strongly believed that the only way that such naked injustice against the innocent children and indeed the people of this country at large can be mitigated is for those who perpetrated the crime to be brought to justice and punished for their crime, which, unfortunately, this regime does not appear to ever intend to do.
President Jammeh was accused of ordering the shooting of the students, but the government denied the allegations. A government commission of inquiry reportedly concluded that the Police Intervention Unit (PIU) officers were “largely responsible” for many of the deaths and other injuries. The inquiry also revealed that five soldiers of the 2nd Infantry Battalion were responsible for the deaths of two students at Brikamaba. The government stated that the report implicated several PIU officers in the students’ deaths and injuries, yet those responsible have never been brought to book. Also to this day the Families of the victims have never been compensated by the Government. Even a remembrance day is forbidden.
It is indeed hard for us to imagine that a government which makes so much noise about its concern for the welfare of its people, particularly their uncompromised security would allow those who have committed such heinous crimes against the children of this country to not only continue to roam the streets with impunity, but for some of them to still continue to occupy important public offices and being paid from the public coffers.
We as young people do condemn the act and call on actions immediately, we are demanding for the names of all those innocent young children whose lives were cut short by bullets of our own security forces, will be engraved in gold in a fitting memorial to be erected in a prominent place in the Greater Banjul Area, and those found culpable for unleashing such brutality on them would finally be brought to book. We call on the Government to accept full responsibility of the incident and compensate the families of the fallen.
It could be recalled that on April 10-11, 2000 The Gambia Students’ Union (GAMSU) organized a large scale protest that threatened the Jammeh administration. The students demonstrated on April 10, 2000 to protest the alleged beating to death of Ebrima Barry at the hand of fire service officers in Brikama, Western Region. Barry was a secondary school student, whose teacher had told the fire service officers to intervene in disciplining him. Ebrima was reportedly beaten, tortured and later died. Apart from the outrageousness of the fact that fire service officers were asked to discipline a student, the government failed to properly investigate the matter. The GAMSU student leadership made demands and an autopsy report (which was widely believed to be a cover up) stated that Ebrima died of natural causes. A spontaneous student protest ensued at the Gambia College, where a Gambia Students’ Union (GAMSU) sub-union existed.
While that was being discussed, a thirteen-year old school girl was allegedly raped by a uniformed paramilitary (intervention police) officer at the Independence Stadium, where an annual inter-schools sports competition was taking place. A doctor‘s examination confirmed the girl was indeed raped and again, GAMSU pressed for answers. After a long delay to bring the paramilitary officers who were on duty at the stadium for the victim to identify her assailant, GAMSU requested a police permit to hold a public protest. This request was denied. Realizing it was their constitutional right to protest, the student leadership called its members to peacefully march toward the capital city of Banjul. They were viciously crushed by a mixture of police and military officers. Sixteen people died, including a Red Cross volunteer/radio journalist and a three-year old child (who was killed by what was reported to be a stray bullet). Fourteen students were killed and several others were injured. GAMSU, which at the time had branches all over the country, did not back down. Upon viewing the violent response of government to the protest of their colleagues in the city, students in the country`s only boarding high school and several other rural towns launched their own protests on April 11; and like their colleagues, they were violently quashed and several hundreds of students were detained country wide.