Gambia Wants To Entrench Impunity

Fatou Jagne Senghore/Malijet Picture
Fatou Jagne Senghore/Malijet Picture

Article 19’s Fatou Jagne Senghore Unmasks Gambia’s Attempt To ‘Entrench Impunity’

Article 19 Regional Director Fatou Jagne Senghore has described the
recent move taken by Gambia govt to pull out from the International
Criminal Court (ICC) as an ‘attempt to entrench impunity’.

“The withdrawal of the Gambia from the ICC is a shock. It buttresses
further the lack of political will to allow people affected by gross human rights abuses and atrocities to seek remedies in the future,”she told this reporter during an exclusive interview.

Gambia announced last month its decision to quit the Hague-based
court, joining South Africa and Burundi that have confirmed their
intention to leave an organisation committed to promote the ideal of
justice without borders.

Fatou Jagne Senghore raised concerns about Gambia’s ICC exit and said it does not augur well for victims of human rights violations. “The current judicial system is flawed and does not accord due process to aggrieved people,” she stated.

Commenting on the withdrawal of certain african countries like South
Africa and Burundi, Article 19 West Africa Director decried the move
and expressed dissatisfaction with the manner in which it was done.

“It shows a disregard to other institutions and the rights of their
own citizens.Withdrawing from a major treaty that caters for human
rights is a serious matter.”

She stressed the need to scale up efforts to stop what she called as
plans to create vacuum.

In spite of the prevailing pessimism about possibility of legal redress at international level, Fatou Jagne Senghore seized the opportunity to remind African countries opting out of ICC that we live in a digital era.

“Most of the crimes committed in today’s world are documented in real
time thanks to technology and the courage of victims. The quest for
justice will not be stopped by such moves,” she said.

The tiny West African nation has been in the spotlight for its poor human rights record. In recent weeks, activists have expressed grave
concerns over a pre-electoral climate that has claimed the life of two
opposition activists and led dozens of UDP supporters to jail. As the
December presidential election getting closer, calls for reason to prevail have
intensified.

Written by Abdoulie John

Ends

2 Comments

  1. NO, NO Sister Fatou,
    The Gambia doesn’t want to entrench impunity. The Gambia wants to deshackle slavery bonds, subjugation to imperialism and neocolonialism. Your references and thoughts are so anti-African and reactionary that you show a face of a neocolonialist henchwoman. Someone head-bent on purifying Western thoughts and mechanisms.
    We believe in judgement and of course judging our people in our own African courts not in imperialist courts where our people are never accorded any impartial hearing.
    Look, Sister Fatou, no American has ever been brought before an international jurisdiction. Does that mean that the Americans should be immuned to all the atrocities committed worldwide? Why can’t the ICC voice out about the injustice meted out to the detainees in the Guantanamo hell prisions on the occupied Cuban soil without charges? Where the innates are so nastily tortured and brutalized!
    In this digital age the Black continent is gradually revitalizing her Black Consciouness to redeem herself from all forms of foreign domination, values and predatory institutions.
    The Gambia, like South Africa, Burundi and many other African states have the Allah-given rights to leave a dysfunctional and imperialist institution that only targets the Black people!

  2. No , indeed the state of impunity wants to kill Gambians, torture, maim and illegally jail them in their type of hypocrisy and bloodthirst in the idiocy of breaking the shackles and chains of the ‘bonds of slavery, subjugation to imperialism and neocolonialism’. You are the most outdated and stupidly alphabetised African I have read at levels like this. Your boss and his likes, I told you, will have to be probed to clear doubts of the younger generation Africans, if he and his likes across Africa are not accomplices in the global victimisation of the tropical African thus when they kill, torture, maim innocent citizens, most become exiled and are usually exposed to being subjects of discrimination and exploitation by learners and amateurs of the western democracies. Your boss and you have sufficiently demonstrated to Gambians and the world at large how real and how true African leaders are ready to devour the lifes of citizens as a way of clinching to power.
    An evidence of blood trickling down the corners of your mouth is always made available by your horrible writings that you might think are impressive. Putting freaky words together doesn’t mean they make any sense at all like you unconsciously do in your comments.

    Did you answer questions relating to why the worst dictators and their entrenchers of the continent love buying properties in the west or in most cases, their families spending most of their times out there???
    If you won’t answer this question……that’s not a surprise because this is the mental state of people referred to as gluttons.

    Sincerely answering the question above should be able to shut you up to go and see a psychiatric to help you deal with greed and sycophancy that your beautiful Gambian heart is badly infested with.