Barrow Hasn’t Threatened Anyone
Those reacting negatively to President Adama Barrow’s Monday speech are nothing but paranoid attention-seeking fear mongerers. The content of President Barrow’s address to Banjul Muslim elders was being ‘tongue twisted.’ Mr. Barrow spoke against those bent on hiding behind activism to create an avenue for civil agitation of demagogery, defamatory and hate speech capable of causing civil disobedience. As a leader of more than two million people, President Barrow is fed up with Madi Jobarteh’s toxic style of activism. As a matter of fact, the Barrow government will not condone any toxic activism. Anyone found wanting on such crimes or acts will face the law.
What do these rabble-rousers want? A country where only those in leadership positions respect the law. If President Barrow respects and obeys the laws of the Gambia, who is Madi Jobarteh to refuse to obey the very laws of the land? I haven’t seen any threats to human rights activists or journalists in Mr. Barrow’s latest speech.
They want to compare President Barrow to the deposed Jammeh who had a legacy of arresting, detaining, torturing and keeping Momodou Lamin Sillah (Ndongo), then head of Gambia Amnesty international incommunicado. Unlike Jammeh, Barrow has never dubbed “journalists bastards” threatening “to bury activists and journalists six feet deep” or lock them in his hotel at Mile II Prisons.
Madi Jobarteh and most of his type were never concerned about Yahya’s threats on Gambians? In fact, Madi Jobarteh never mentioned Yahya Jammeh’s name while the two of them were on the Gambia soil. The very first time he mentioned Yahya Jammeh in his write up he was in safe zone in Norway and because of that he never returned to the Gambia until after Jammeh’s removal in 2016.
Peacetime heroes and cry babies are trying to insinuate the existence of dictatorship in the Gambia when in the actual fact there is not an iota of threat to a single life or property in that country. Stop the self victimisation and attention seeking because the Gambia’s human rights record has significantly improved under the leadership of President Barrow. The Gambia’a World Press Freedom Index continues to improve significantly since Barrow ascended to power in February 2017.
Therefore, it is disservice or disingenuous for anyone to raise false alarm about the presence of imaginative threats and dictatorial tendencies in the Gambia. Such claims will not earn Madi Jobarteh or anyone gain the attention of the world. Do these rabble-rousers know how long it took genuine Gambians to fight against dictatorship and conquer in that country? The funny side of the Gambia’s struggle to dislodge Jammeh from power is that worthy human rights activists and journalists who were consecutively arrested, tortured and made to lose everything are not among the many so-called victims marauding all over the country claiming victim status. Yes, I can say this with Pride that I was in the midst of the struggle to defeat the Jammeh dictatorship. In fact, I had risked my life so many times to investigate and expose the Jammeh regime’s gross violations of human rights. I almost lost my precious life in the process. There are hundreds of heroic victims who are patiently waiting for the outcome of the government’s White Paper on the TRRC. Unlike the like rabble-rousers, heroes decide to choose the High Moral Ground.
Yaya Dampha
NPP Coordinator, Sweden
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