Sheriff Challenged On Twisting Facts

By Malang Darboe

I have not heard such soul-elevating sermon in years! Imam Ceesay has absolved himself of the indictment of history that: “a man dies in all that keep silent in the face of tyranny”. May the Almighty preserve him in health, strenght and and razor edged intellect to continue the cusade against Pharaoh! Else where I wrote Purported breach of “Public Order Act” constitutes Death in the Islamic Republic of the Gambia according to the Minister of Information Sheriff Bojang.

“By what show of argument could the accusers of Socrates persuade the Athenians he had forfeited his life to the state”?  Asked one of the disciples, Xenophon.

By what deceptive yet debased argument could the APRC government convince the Gambians, and indeed the world, that Solo Sandeng the National Organising Secretary of United Democratic Party and Co-protesters deserve death for the exercise of a constitutionally guaranteed right?

A right to peaceful protest is a constitutionally guaranteed right of any citizen within the Islamic Republic of The Gambia and does not require police permit or private authorization of some official secret service agencies of the state.  Section 25 (d) of the Constitution of the Second Republic clearly guarantees:  freedom to assemble and demonstrate peaceably and without arms;

(e) freedom of association, which shall include freedom to form and join associations and unions, including political parties and trade unions”.

Of all conditional or qualifying clauses secondary, thus, to gather, discuss and subsequently protest peacefully against a perfidious electoral law and evidently flawed process does not constitute breach of the vaunted Public Order Act as advanced by the Information Minister on BBC Focus on Africa Friday the 15th 2016.  The minister fraudulently argued that “any government anywhere else in the world would react just the same way with the breach of Public Order Act”.

Assuming the Information Minister’s statement was right and the peaceful protesters wrong, do their purported wrong actions constitute inhuman degrading treatment, torture and death without trial?  “Who started all this”?  His rhetorical question in the same interview suggested the answer in the affirmative that the breach of Public Order Act equals torture and death without trial. The perfidy of the constitution of the Republic, and sadism of the National Intelligence Agency who are always baying for Gambian blood, are not adequate reasons to sacrifice innocent Gambian lives on the altars of the presidential ego. Even brutal tyrannies offered sham trials of hearing for their captives before molestation, yet what obtains in the Gambia seems to have no parallel.

But from where does this strange strand of cruelty come?  The strand of inhumanity Gambia is inducted into by Jammeh and gang proves Blaise Pascal wrong when he tells us that “men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” Ours do not do it on any religious edict, and neither on any system of political thoughts; not even aberrant: Capitalism, Marxism or Fascism.  Such cruelty only obtains when politics goes mad as had in Rwanda and Burundi of that infamous tribal extermination. In a seeming peaceful Gambia, our marauding gangsters are only of a satanic cult with its disciples running amok on an otherwise peace loving population!

This is the state of anomie Gambia has endured for the last two decades of Jammeh’s tyranny and the nation is expected to pass it off peacefully. The population is emasculated and purged of its intellectual and skilful content, politicians terrorised, businessmen, businesses and investors divest and migrate to areas where life and properties are respected, journalists flogged, at worst shot down like stray dogs; religious leaders are beaten up, silenced or banished, prisoners – political or otherwise, serving their terms cannot be guaranteed of their life or liberty during or after mandatory jail terms, ordinary passengers are detained and maltreated for merely complaining about the hardship of life in the Gambia, and the victims are left to the mercy of their tormentors. The nation is inducted into a terrifying fear of being watched or wiretapped by the Gestapo of the Jammeh’s gang. Ask those that have been at burnt of these sadistic cruelties, and your mind revolts against the possibility of the authors as ever being Gambians.

Let the sycophants, intellectual prostitutes and downright hypocrites safe us of moral relativism by excusing the executive perfidy by deceptive reference to some physical developments registered in the Gambia since the gangsterism of Jammeh in 1994!  Of what benefit is the painting of heavens with gold for a slave that expects to die tomorrow?  If physical developments absent sacrosanctity of human life represent progress, Pharaoh, Haman and Junuds are the best progressive exemplars of all humans.  And those fascinated by the monuments of tyranny, Pharaoh’s pyramids and sphinx offer ideal attraction

Our protests and writings may not make sense for some, or have meaning for others, but Professor Soyinka enjoins us to “recognise and embrace our mission of testifying and laying in ambush for escapist minds”; those hell bent on peddling the fraud that killing the innocents by the presidential cavalcade or the political opponents by the marauding Gestapo are necessary conducts of the establishment for Gambians to enjoy visit and vision of 22nd Arch in Banjul!

The Gambia under these Pharaoh architypes is a Potemkin village and the pus is oozing out with the break of technology on our shores.  Who could have missed the contemptuous manhandling of innocent protesters by the Gestapo?   The real-time row evidences on the social media are disheartening!
As if an orphan child abandoned by the surrogate mother, Gambians are left to deal with their misfortune, and the rest of the world watches.  ECOWAS does not help, African Union is silent and the Family of Nations (UN) does not seem to realise that one of its renegade members is tobogganing into chaos.  Certainly United Nations cannot be ignorant of this cesspit of criminality in the Gambia, but almost always stay aloof until innocent blood drenched the gutters, only to “express concerns”, and seldom pass dull denunciations after the havoc! What more respect is left of a mother that leaves one of her unwanted children to the mercy of raging bull and rush to rescue only when the child goes lifeless?
The constitution of any country does not precede the rights of the citizens of a state, but merely guarantees them. Categorically stated: our rights were not born with the advent to the Second Republic, and cannot be compromised in preservation of maladministration, down right cruelty and death.

With the deceptive evocation of The Public Order Act as an alibi for the excesses of the Gestapo, the official agenda is announced.  The Information Minister Mr Sheriff Bojang has confirmed that in Yahya Jammeh’s Gambia life does not matter; anyone who by default or design exercises his or her God given right to dissent, even if guaranteed by the Constitution, deserves death as Solo Sandeng and Co.

If the very protocol that binds us together as a people and nation is flagrantly flouted by the very agencies that ought

to promote, protect and observe its limits, what else is left of a people than to employ whatever method is necessary to preserve their rights, liberty and dignity? Neither history nor Providence would ever condemn any in rising up against so hash a condition and shameful a servitude as obtained in the Gambia. We are certainly not the first to be confronted with this anomaly in human history, and our rescue does not lie elsewhere except to stand up and confront the orgy.

Malang Darbo