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Momodou
Denmark
11787 Posts |
 Posted - 21 Sep 2025 : 23:04:50
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Gambia: Never Again is Never Again
By Dr. Baba Galleh Jallow
Recent civil developments in The Gambia have caused some people to doubt the possibility of non-repetition of dictatorship in this country. The police crackdown on peaceful protesters over the PURA issue, the social upheaval and attendant police action over the removal of the Auditor General, and most recently, violent police activity at Jabang regarding some clashes over land issues – all these are cited as reason to believe that Gambia is sliding back into dictatorship, and that the admirable achievements of our transitional justice process, especially the TRRC, will come to naught.
It is our contention that this is not necessarily the case. We firmly believe that The Gambia has gone beyond dictatorship. That the spirit of Never Again popularized in this country by the transitional justice process will not allow the rise of another dictatorship. The reality is that no longer will the government go unchallenged in the face of human rights abuses and disregard for the rule of law. The civic culture of the Jammeh days, characterized by crippling fear and citizen apathy when it comes to state abuse of power has been replaced by a civic culture in which Gambians will not keep quiet in the face of state abuse of political authority. Any government intent on imposing a dictatorship in this country will have to be prepared to commit horrendous crimes of repression that will inevitably lead to its downfall and the future prosecution of its members.
We are comforted by the thought that our transitional justice process has been singularly transformative in terms of revealing the cruel atrocities of the Jammeh dictatorship and making a critical mass of Gambians determined never to allow their repetition by any government. The TRRC was created precisely so that Gambians can look at themselves through the mirror of a history in which they saw their fellow citizens, and in a sense themselves being turned into slaves of fear, subjected to cruel abductions and disappearances, tortured, arbitrarily arrested, extrajudicially executed, snatched from their families, friends and loved ones and often dumped in unidentifiable unmarked graves or in abandoned wells where they most likely will forever remain. The revelations at the TRRC hearings uncovered a part of the Gambian psyche that Gambians didn’t know they possessed, and that they are now more than prepared to disown. It would take more than ordinary state brutality to douse this public determination to prevent the rise of another dictatorship in this country.
Recent events, however sad and unsettling, testify to the reality that in today’s Gambia, people will speak up against any real or perceived abuse of state authority, and they will protest and sound the alarm in no uncertain terms that dictatorship and rampant human rights violations will not go unchallenged. They will petition the head of state and the government, they will petition the international community, and they will tell the police in no uncertain terms that some of their tactics against their fellow citizens are unbecoming of a civilized society, and are therefore unacceptable. This is the state of our civic culture: we are a post-dictatorship nation.
The Gambian people are still smarting from the hurts of the Jammeh dictatorship. Victims are struggling to heal, families are unable to forget their missing ones, images of the cruel things done to family members, neighbors and fellow citizens are still fresh in the public mind, the enormity of the mindless impunity and recklessness of the former government still sparks outrage in the public mind and reinforces the determination to prevent recurrence. Our transitional justice process popularized the notion and the knowledge that political power truly resides in the people and that unchallenged impunity is what morphs into political impunity and despotism. A critical mass of individual citizens and institutions has emerged in the post-TRRC period that will simply refuse to remain silent out of fear and that is determined to hold their government accountable.
On a final note, let us just say that the current and any future government of The Gambia will do well to become experts in the art of crisis management. They should know that any national crisis handled by force is better handled by emotional intelligence and tact. No controversy or bone of contention within the body politic is so complicated as to defy intelligent resolution. The only exception to this rule is state insistence on deploying impunity and brutality to the extent that it is ready to sink into criminality by willfully trampling on the laws of the land and spilling the blood of its citizens. Such a state will be headed for disaster and its leaders will be held accountable at some point in the future.
Let us collectively deploy our minds, not our arms, to resolve the issues that arise in our society and move this beautiful little country forward. We can do it.
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A clear conscience fears no accusation - proverb from Sierra Leone |
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Gambia: Never Again is Never Again
