GAMBIANS UNITED TO SECURE THE COALITION
BOX 56436 WASHINGTON, DC. 20011
February 15, 2005
His Excellency
Mr. Kofi Annan
Secretary General United Nations
UN Plaza, 405 E. 42 St.
New York, New York. 10017
Dear Sir:
We hereby express our collective wishes of a happy and prosperous new year
to you and your staff with the hope that all your efforts to bring normalcy in
the “troubled spots” in the world become a reality. To us who love Africa
and freedom, 2005 will be a decisive year in the future of Gambia.
In April 2004, in commemoration of the 4th anniversary of the students’
massacre by the Gambian armed and security forces, we wrote to you expressing our
despair with increasing uncertainty for our peaceful existence in the
Gambia. We hope the content of that letter was brought to your attention so that
you can intervene and help us in aborting the gestation of the horrible end the
Jammeh regime is heading towards.
Sir, we are writing to you again at a more alarming state of mind because
matters have gotten worse and the terror, brutality and intimidation of the
Jammeh regime is steadily on the increase. “Drive-by shooting” Has become the
choice of assassination of Gambians who oppose the regime’s draconian decrees
and Jammeh’s abominable abuse of “power.” The most recent case in point is
the heinous assassination of the prominent journalist, Deyda Hydara on
December 16, 2004. Following the premeditated murder of Mr. Hydara, as usual, the
regime made some irate vows to bring the murderer(s) to justice and even made
overtures of praises to his prominence as a journalist only to sign into law
the repressive “media bill” which will erase the memory of Deyda Hydara,
abrogate “press freedom” and speech.
A similar case in point of a “drive-by shooting happened on December 26,
2003, when Mr. Ousman Sillah, a prominent Gambian lawyer was shot twice in the
head near his residence but miraculously survived with permanent kidney damage
and facial deformities requiring constructive surgeries. We are still
waiting for the investigation on the assassination attempt on Mr. Sillah.
We know better than to believe that the regime will investigate this
horrible act of the murder of Mr. Hydara, one of the most harmless and peaceful
Gambians. We can cite several instances of criminal atrocities that are still
UN-investigated let alone bringing the perpetrators to “justice.” In their first
two years following their “lift on to the saddles of power,” all the
criminal atrocities committed by the regime were justified on the grounds of:
consolidating the rule of terror typical of military coups. Subsequent to being “
civilianized” and the massive rigging of the 1996 presidential elections, all
the criminal atrocities committed against Gambians were promised to be
investigated and to this date no reports has been made public or private.
On January 17, 2005, an event of historic significance took place at the
Atlantic Hotel in Banjul, where a coalition of all the “opposition parties” -
better known as the “alternative”- signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)
under the leadership of National Alliance for Democracy and Development
(NADD) to select a flag bearer to contest the upcoming presidential elections in
2006. As expected, Jammeh saw this honorable act as a challenge to his “
president for life” aspirations and made repeated threats that none of the “
opposition leaders” will be around by the 2006 presidential elections. In
addition to these threats, Jammeh said “I sacrificed my life to get to this
position, whoever wants my post will have to sacrifice his life.” We take these
threats against our leaders seriously based on what happened during the 1996
presidential elections, the recent murder of Mr. Hydara and the assassination
attempt on Mr. Sillah
It was under the brutal period of the Armed Forces Provisional Ruling
Council (AFPRC) and its later civilian regime, Alliance for Patriotic
Reconciliation Council (APRC) that Gambians witnessed the worst ten years in our recent
history. The vast majority of Gambians are fed-up with the daily threats of “
heads will roll” and “six feet deep”, hence the pressure on the “opposition
parties” to form a coalition to relief Gambians of this nightmare.
Since the signing of the MOU by the coalition, the regime has embarked on a
spate of arrests and indefinite detentions of civilians, armed and security
forces personnel without any due process of law. In fact the only law in the
Gambia is the “law according to Jammeh” which is “guilty until proven
innocent” as oppose to “innocent until proven guilty”; a blatant reversal of the
dictum of justice. In our view, Jammeh is preparing the grounds to foul-up the
process to the elections so as to provoke incidents and there by justify any
repressive actions in the name of “national security.”
Unlike Sierra Leone, Liberia and Rwanda, we are raising the alarm on the
warning signs of the horrible end of a state operating on greed and tyranny. We
are hoping that someone is listening and paying attention to bring about an
end to this impending horror in the Gambia.
Mr. Secretary, we are going on record again as did other oppressed countries
and people in the past to exhaust every possible source for redress of the
violations of our human rights by the Jammeh regime. We harbor no illusions
about what the past ten years has done to our existence.
We have been very disappointed with alarming suspicion of the recent actions
of the African Union according the Jammeh regime the privilege of hosting
the upcoming AU summit in 2006, the same year for the presidential elections.
We see it as an attempt to authenticate the regime with total disregard for
the human rights violations against the Gambian people. This is the most
inappropriate time to hold such an event in the Gambia.
Finally, we hope you will give our concerns and worries a critical
consideration and take action before matters become regrettable. We also hope that you
or your designated representative will be able to meet with our delegation
for a brief discussion. We await your kind and considerate reply.
Yours respectfully,
The Undersigned:
Movement for the Restoration of Democracy in The Gambia[NY]
Gambian Diasporan for National Alliance for Democracy and Development[USA]
Gambians for Change
Gambians United to Secure the Coalition
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