Editor of Rwanda’s only English daily has written an editorial, urging the world to protect Mandinkas from being terminated by President Yahya Jammeh. In the editorial published below, the editor explained why the world must not sit idle and allow a replica of Rwanda’s genocide in which over 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were hacked to death. Jammeh’s inflammatory public statement was the exact speech that a ruling party regional official Leon Mugesera delivered in 1992. The statement, delivered to over 1,000 people, was replayed several times on national media. This laid foundation for the 1994 genocide.
Read Rwandan editor’s take on the Gambian leader’s hate speech.
One would have thought that what happened in Rwanda in 1994 would have served as a lesson to the world.
One would have thought that the ghost of ethnic hatred would not haunt this continent again, but it seems that is not the case.
But what is most worrying is when a Head of State openly makes threatening remarks against a section of his population.
That is none other than the controversial Yahya Jammeh, President of Gambia, who threatened to eliminate the Mandinka ethnic group “one by one” and put them “where even a fly cannot see them”.
Words like that coming from a Head of State should indeed be taken seriously, and Adama Dieng, United Nations Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide, was quick to sound the alarm.
Dieng knows what he is talking about when it come to matter of ethnic cleansing and incitement to commit Genocide by people in authority and who wield enormous powers of persuasion.
For over ten years he headed the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). He saw first-hand the effects of Genocide and the role of leaders in fanning it.
So when Jammeh calls the Mandinka names such “enemies and foreigners, he is paving the way for impunity and the world should be worried. We saw the devastating effects of Leon Mugesera’s inflammatory speech in 1992, now we are seeing a re-enactment in Gambia.
Will the world just be contented with mere “condemnations” or will it flex its muscles and take decisive measures?
Courtesy of New Times of Rwanda
Ends
Thank you for sounding the ALARM Mr. Editor.
Yaya Jammeh is mentally deranged person and will always carry his threats even if it means postponing it for another day.
Yaya Janneh is dangerouse but because we are not doing anything about it.
Sooner or later we’ll find ouselfs in much more chllenging situation than we’re already in .
We need to take much more stronger position even it means assassination plot with single shot in his head or blowup his motocad by using shoulder rocket launcher. We can do this if are willing to open our wallets little bit wider Gambia worth it.
Thire are more than fifthy thousand Gambians worldwide who are in position to give $200 from thire paycheck workout breaking the bank. If that happens we have more that enough to buy Launcher and pay the trickerman to save us from total destruction.
Food for thought.
Troy , I am 100 % behind that idea because it is the most feasible and sensible approach to eliminate him . Another way to eliminate him is to recruit a young light-skinned beautiful woman within The Gambia or outside to do the job . This man has a low life and he will be tempted to have sex with any woman or teenage as long as she has a big butt . Yaya is a sexual predator . He is indeed a bastard and a monster for that matter .
By now everyone in and out of the Gambia knows Yahya Jammeh’s wickedness and arrogance and if our leaders, elders,educated and politicians fail to come together and select among themselves a very strong team who can represent us and speak for us to put pressure on the international community to do something about the Gambia, we will all bite our fingers one day in regret. Some of you are calling Yahya Jammeh a mad man, so would you sit and watch a mad man to kill your family and then you take him to court? ? This wild bush pig should be stopped before it’s too late.