By Ousainou Mbenga
In his tucked – tail retreat from travelling outside the Gambia and his cowardly movements between Kanilai and Banjul under heavy armor and the senseless military check points, Jammeh is given a taste of his own medicine of “living in fear”; thanks to the December 30, 2014 attack on the State House. Jammeh now more than ever before knows that we have driven him to the edge of the cliff of no return to join past neocolonial gangsters like him that wreaked havoc on Africa. The once paralyzing fear, never known in our beloved Gambia has finally evaporated into thin air.
Second to April 10 and 11, 2000; December 30, 2014 will be forever etched on our national consciousness.
Credible information has reached us that, no less than a thousand guards (GNA, NIA and his unofficial thugs) rotate monthly in defense of the State House in Banjul. The number of guards at the killing fields in Kanilai is open to anyone’s guess. This is the end game for tyrants who choose to be deaf, dumb and blind to peace and social justice. Jammeh doesn’t even trust himself, neither his shadow for a very long time. As the saying goes: “Baaken Jama la Bugga” – there is no soul that doesn’t yearn for peace; even Jammeh. But peace, he will never know for the rest of his devilish life. If anyone doubts his paranoia with paralyzing fear; watch the procession on the day of the Eid prayers. Inside the mosque, rows in front, beside and behind him stood plain clothes killers at guard while he “prayed”.
He’s been heard telling an American ambassador that, “he is not the monster people claim he is”. Joseph Mobutu, a poisoned fruit from the same tree as Jammeh once uttered: “I am not a monster”.
Yes, 21 years has been too damn long to have put up with AFPRC-APRC tyranny but our relentless fight has driven Jammeh to the end of his rope. Either he hangs himself or we will uproot him by any means necessary. For quite some time, Jammeh has realized that we had pierced through his “armor of invincibility”, rendering all his ghoulish sacrifices and amulets (“Jujus”) useless.
Like tyrants before him, the consequences of his reign of terror have begun to melt away the fear that his regime fed on for the past years. Now, Jammeh is drowning in the sewage of his repressive regime. After unleashing every imaginable act of terror against the people of our peace loving Gambia, he resorts to the oldest trick in the “book of tyrants”. Jammeh now resorts to deceitful acts of sympathy and questionable benevolence such as his recent presidential “massive pardons” of prisoners, the majority of whom were illegally imprisoned in the first place. He is at his desperate best to survive this catastrophe of his own making.
Jammeh never does anything at the goodness of his heart. If he did he would have had friends. Everyone that Jammeh so called befriended either ended tragic or in betrayal.
Additional pressure, aside from the resistance of the “diaspora” is bearing heavily on Jammeh from international organizations and governments to make gestures of “reconciliation”. It has been confirmed that Mrs. Fatou Bensouda, the sitting Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) recently visited Gambia and indeed met with Jammeh. Whether she gave him her own advice or conveyed advice from other sources to diffuse the mounting internal crises and begin laying down his “exit plan” or worst, preparing the grounds for the 2016 elections; Jammeh can never rule in the same old way he did.
The “genie is out of the bottle”; it can never be put back. As the genie got out of the bottle, so did Ali Cham, a Gambian rapper, stage name “Killer Ace”, with his caustic relics (“Ku Boka C Geta G”) against the buffoon Jammeh regime. The bottled –up bitterness against the AFPRC – APRC regime is erupting like a hot blast.
But Jammeh has a lot more to answer to beyond the ceremonial release of “229 prisoners” under bizarre circumstances. Like most Gambians, I personally welcome the release of the prisoners but categorically not grateful to anyone, especially Jammeh. A mere scratch on the surface is not satisfactory. We must dig deep down into the rot that AFPRC-APRC has created during its reign of terror to come to a closure.
There are no doubts that the willfully ignorant sycophants of the regime and the advocates of “meaningless peace” will be at it again in their baseless defense of this dying but not yet dead regime. They have become masters at spinning reality wrong side up with their empty slogans “we don’t want any violence” and “Gambia is a peaceful country”. Where were these hypocrites for the past 21 years when violence was the only solution Jammeh applied in every situation? If you want meaningful peace, you must be willing to fight for it.
We will protest against any attempts to sanitize Jammeh for the sake of “meaningless reconciliations” at our expense. There must be a new beginning in our beloved Gambia which cannot co-exist with Jammeh.
We demand:
. An independent investigation into Koro Ceesay’s mysterious death.
. An investigation into the disappearance of Chief Ebrima Manneh, Saul Ndow, Mahawa Cham, Ndure Cham, Ebou Jobe, Mahmoud Ceesay and countless other soldiers and civilians.
. An investigation into the assassination of Deida Hydara.
. An inquiry in the torture chambers such as Fort Bullen and “Bamba Dinka” with testimony from torture and rape survivors.
. An open inquiry into the prison population at the Jeswang and George Town prisons.
“FREEDOM FOR EVERYBODY OR FRREDOM FOR NOBODY”! JAMMEH MUST GO!
Ends