The article below was culled from the Independent newspaper. It expresses
the outrage I believe every Gambian should feel towards Yaya's decision not
to prosecute a single person for the massacre of our children. It sounds odd
for me to ascribe to Yaya the power to prosecute people in The Gambia. But
the ugly truth is that Secka has shown that he is even more impotent than
Yaya and would allow a moron like Yaya to make legal decisions for him. Both
Secka and Yaya have just punched their cards for a date with the firing
squad. These people will have to pay for this.

I perused the Gambian papers on line, but I am yet to see a single word of
outrage from opposition leaders back home. If they let Yaya get away with
this, then they all need to go find other occupations. They would have
demonstrated that they are not fit to lead people. Perhaps they should do
like me and realize that they are not political leaders, and go pursue other
careers.

Plans should be underway to kick Yaya out of the State House and bring him
and Secka before a court of law like all common criminals. I have said
before that we should all take part of the blame for the lost of lives on
April 10 and 11, 2000. I will say that again. My reason for saying so is
that had the opposition against Yaya been effective, there would be no need
for the students to die trying to fight for the rest of us. That is why I
personally resolved, after April 11, 2000, that I will not rest until I see
Yaya taken to a stadium and have his brains blown out. We all have another
opportunity to redeem ourselves and avert another massacre. The way we do
that, is to leave the children at home and  have grown up men (that want to
be presidents and members of parliament and alkalos etc.) go out and take
Yaya on. March to the State House and demonstrate your outrage. If you are
too scared of Yaya, then organize a sit-in and bring the country to a
standstill.

Yaya and his cohorts are cowards and they do not believe in what they are
doing. As I said yesterday and as confirmed by the Independent article, even
a vermin like Secka cannot look people in the eye and try and defend this
despicable action. No one (including Yaya) will fight for this injustice to
our children. If Yaya is taken on, the coward will run away. Take that from
me. The problem with most opposition leaders is that they do not know Yaya.
Because Yaya was a nonentity before 1994, few Gambians know him. He is a
coward of the highest order. The people surrounding him are no better. As I
said before, the same cowards that deserted Jawara in his hour of need, will
desert Yaya when he is taken on by the masses.

How many soldiers do we have in our army? Can they kill all the Gambians? As
a citizen, I demand a reaction from Halifa Sallah, Ousainou Darboe and Hamat
Bah. Even if they have to come out and agree with Secka, people deserve to
hear from them. I can speak for myself and say that anyone that sides with
Secka and Yaya on this would be declaring war against the Gambian people in
my book.

This is simply incomprehensible. I agree with the Independent that Secka's
reasoning is so ridiculous that it does not deserve to be analyzed. But I
cannot resist pointing out the absurdity in the reason given for rejecting
the coroner's report as opposed to the reason given for rejecting the
commission's report. They blamed Ousman Jammeh (coroner) because he did not
recommend that someone be charged. Then they blame the commission for
recommending that someone be charged. This is preposterous.

Again, I am back to our opposition leaders on the ground. Do not say that
you have not been warned. Darboe for instance is a lawyer and should have
seen this coming. Halifa Sallah has actively debated several issues
regarding this heinous crime on G_L. For reasons best known to all of them,
they opted to postpone the ordeal. We all know that it would take a
confrontation for Yaya and his cohorts to do what is right in this case. We
should have pounced on them the minute they started their delay tactics by
setting up that bogus commission. I made several appeals to our leaders, to
no avail. Now that Yaya and Secka have finally shown us what we should have
seen coming months ago, we have to step up to the plate.

Frankly, if I were Darboe, Sallah or Hamat Bah and I realize that I cannot
lead people to ensure that justice is done here, I will resign from my post.
Leaders lead. They do not follow other people and compare themselves with
ordinary citizens. If someone makes a decision to become a political leader,
they should be ready to face the music.
KB
____________________________________________________
INDEPENDENT VIEW
Justice deniedJustice denied
What should we call this? An act of desperation? A blatant lack of respect
and regard for human conscience? A rude slap on the face of Gambian
intelligence? Yes. And more: A simple uncomplicated case of justice bluntly
denied. No wonder Justice Secretary Pap Cheyassin Secka hurriedly scurried
away as soon as he finished reading his statement to the press, without
taking a single question from journalists. He is, of course, a Gambian. He
is, of course, a Muslim. He does, of course, have a conscience.
He was, of course, chillingly guilty because he knew that what he was
reading out, what he was ramming down the throat of this helpless nation,
was naked injustice. Of course, he may have been acting, like everyone else
in today's official Gambia, on orders from above. That the Gambia
government, with no qualms at all, and with an absolutely straight face, can
openly reject the reports of both the commission of inquiry into the April
10 and 11 student demonstrations and the findings of the Coroner's Inquest
into the shooting to death of about a dozen students and a journalist by
security forces is a damning indictment of the Jammeh regime. It shall go
down into the annals of history as an unforgivable and unforgettable crime
against the people of The Gambia.
Yes, government's rejection of the recommendations of both the commission
and the coroner's reports is simply an expression of the Jammeh government's
'I don't care' attitude. Having now attributed to itself almost God-like
qualities, the Jammeh regime feels it can do anything on the face of this
earth and get away with it. Our opinion, from the very beginning, was that
neither the commission of inquiry nor the coroner's inquest was necessary.
Our position was that the facts of the bloody massacres of April 10 and 11,
2000 spoke clearly for themselves. Our position was that the setting up of
the commission and coroner's inquest was simply a ploy by the government to
diffuse tension and buy time. Our position was that nothing would come out
of it.
Now, we have been proven right. Those Gambians who lost their children,
brothers, sisters and colleagues can now forget about justice being done to
whoever killed their relatives. Clearly, we do not even need to digress on
the flimsy reasons put forward by the government for rejecting the findings
and recommendations of the commission and coroner's inquest. Such absurd
excuses as the argument that the commission did not inquire into the causes
of the student disturbances are simply embarrassing for our national image
and unworthy of analysis. Even more absurd was the government's lightly
veiled attempt at blaming the press for the disturbances.
If any report led to the breakdown of law and order, it was the threatening
press release, aired over Radio Gambia, which warned students that the
security forces would not tolerate any disturbances of the peace. This
threatening press release, broadcast days before April 10, spread word of an
imminent student action countrywide and fuelled already boiling student
tempers. So let the Justice Secretary give the press a break. Upon
reflection, we seem to see an emergent pattern of pacification of the
security forces by the Jammeh government. A few days before this latest
outrage, the government had categorically said that no soldier would be
arrested or charged over the cold-blooded shooting to dead of three unarmed
persons at Omorto and Giboro.
So what we are having is beginning to look like a situation in which a
paranoid regime will condone anything done by soldiers in order to guarantee
its own security. A situation in which the people are indirectly told, 'you
better be warned…if you are killed nothing will come out of it.' Happily, no
amount of denials and rejections of report findings can ever kill the truth.
It is sad though, as Mahatma Gandhi would say, that justice in our society
is increasingly becoming a luxury of the rich and powerful and the joy of
the gambler.
However, those who feel that they can do anything and get away with it
should know that they can never escape their rendezvous with history, their
rendezvous with destiny, their rendezvous with Divine Justice, however
powerful they feel in their weak corporeal vehicles. Meanwhile, we join all
right thinking Gambians in mourning this naked abortion of justice. We cry
this classical imposition of the verdict of the iron grid. We cry this naked
denial of justice. We cry the beloved country.

_________________________________________________________________
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