Who Protects Who?

The Independent (Banjul)
EDITORIAL
April 23, 2004
Posted to the web April 27, 2004
Banjul

We are taking recent devastating developments revolving around The
Independent in our stride. Once again the pernicious signatures of the
devil's advocates are all over this deviously nefarious act, which has all
the hallmarks of vexatious hatred, incredibly fed by a living and
passionate aversion to everything we and the rest of the free, democratic
and civilised world stood for. Once again the unbridled campaign of
violence targeting the paper has betrayed the extent to which the enemies
of progress can go to wreck monstrous havoc on the progressive activities
of promoters of a free society, where everybody lives by their rights to
say what they think and feel and not get harangued, pilloried and gagged
for daring to move along the highway of dissent.

On the vantage point of hindsight everybody realises that April 13 was a
costly and embarrassing security failure on the part of the Gambian
authorities to protect all sections of the society irrespective what
politicians at the helm think of its immediate beneficiaries. When we talk
about security, we are not necessarily narrowing and confining the width of
our mindset to the idea of police or armed guards placed at our doorsteps.
What we mean covers the whole security structure of the land which suggests
putting in place a kind of national, all-encompassing security mechanism
that will make it difficult if not impossible for all manner of people
running around with guns to do so. Our streets are awash with gangs, armed
groups and people claiming to be local vigilantes left on their own devices
with guns, questions of whose origin are never even pondered over by the
plethora of security agencies.

Before the incident the whole world bore witness to our plaintive calls for
security in the intervening days and months following a series of threats
from unidentified deviants and those calling themselves the Green Boys who
had vowed to carry on with their dastardly deeds.

Although we duly notified the police about these threats, each time they
were dismissed with contemptuous indifference, betraying the attitude of
the authorities as inconsiderate, unreasonable and unhelpful especially
when we talk in terms of the welfare of journalists, who are roundly
treated with dispassionate contempt. If we were crying wolf, when the woods
was clear of danger, the latest arson attack, the one before it and other
more subtle and frustrating campaigns of chicanery meted out on poor
defenseless Gambian journalists were enough vindication for us that, our
calling is fraught with risks, which must be appreciated if freedom of the
press is to avoid being compromised, driven to the backwaters and
eventually destroyed by enemies armed with bloodshot intent. There is a
ridiculously ironic backdrop to this situation, which puts President
Jammeh's tough talk about not compromising the security of the country into
kaleidoscopic focus. "We will not compromise the security of this country"
he was often heard saying. But security for whom? Is it only for him and
his immediate clique or does it truly cover the whole country? We are bound
to ask these questions, convinced, as we are under the circumstances that
it was being discriminately and selectively applied. It is now ten days
since the arson attack but save for a lone suspect, the police and other
security agencies have still not emerged with decisive results despite
penetrating leads in the form of a "smoking gun" and dependable information
about a culprit on the run with severe burns at their disposal. By annoying
contrast, the purported killers of an NIA driver were quickly identified
and rounded up days after their alleged victim met his fate in their hands
in Kitty. These alleged killers are now in the dock charged with murder.
Going by the nature of the crime, there is no doubting the fact that we are
dealing with organised criminals and a fresh pattern of cold unprecedented
viciousness, we need much more than the lip service of the security
agencies if we should rightly entertain hopes of reaching a logical
conclusion over this vexatious matter. We are no experts in criminological
investigations, but general knowledge about criminology, suggests that
investigations always begin with the casting of a "net" in a wide area to
cover the geography of suspects. Once the pieces start falling in place,
some suspects are naturally rendered irrelevant as the picture becomes
clearer. This is what the police have not done as yet for there are two
other very pertinent suspects who visited the press house barely an hour
before gunmen burst onto the scene. We held back from the police no
information we knew about these suspects in our natural concern for them to
make headways in their investigation. This does not necessarily deride the
police or demean their contribution, but our opinion is a disarmingly frank
reflection of a general view being entertained by concerned quarters that
the security agencies should do more. The world's eye is on them.

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