This is a damning report by The Republic about the illegal introduction and sale of Russian oil in the Gambia, with the full knowledge, total participation, and active connivance between state officials and private businesses. This is not only a gross negligence of duty by public officials but also a clear violation of the laws of the country and blatant abuse of power and corruption by these institutions and businesses.
It is good that NAM Sainey Jawara has triggered the ongoing parliamentary inquiry and we hope the parliamentarians will reach the bottom of the truth and ensure that there is total transparency and accountability.
Until then, one needs to remind Pres. Barrow to take a hard look at his administration. In his own interest, today and tomorrow. He can sit there to view investigative journalists, activists, political opponents, and citizens with divergent and dissenting opinions as enemies, and therefore ignore the issues they raise.
But Barrow must be guided, if he cannot advise himself to realize that his administration is disgustingly corrupt and incompetent which is a danger to the peace and stability of the country.
Barrow must begin to question his ministers, technocrats and advisors for the kind of advice and guidance they give him because it is very clear that he is being misguided, misinformed and kept in the dark for lot of the things going on in his administration. Yet, at the end of the day, he will come to take full responsibility for everything, whether he knew or not, and whether he had approved those decisions and actions or not. Time will tell.
The Gambia should not be turned into a client state run by cartels and fraudsters. What these institutions and officials did in this case is to make our country a piracy where criminals come with their loot to trade and run off with their profits. This is utterly shameful and every decent Gambian must be visibly angry that our own officials would allow and turn our country into a shitty republic. I don’t forgive them.
Madi Jobarteh
Kembujeh
November 11th, 1994 (excerpt from The Dictator Is Us)
After a whole week of digging, we found nothing. We moved on to another location and kept at it. It was difficult for the team and me. Every day, we arrived with the hope that we would find some remains. We would dig and dig and dig — but found nothing. I began to sense morale gradually ebbing. We gave some team members time off to take a break and rejuvenate and replaced them with others. The lead investigators, Thomas and Jally, were tenacious and would not give up and insisted that if we had to dig up the whole barracks, then so be it, but we would find these remains.
We kept at it. Through the efforts of Thomas Gomez, one of our witnesses who was not exactly cooperative the first time we spoke to him proved key in helping us narrow down the location.
We got word that he had supervised the burial, and so we spoke to him again and warned him that if he did not help us find these remains, he would have to face the family members of the victims and tell them he buried their loved ones but could not remember where. We encouraged him to be up-front because those buried were our fellow Gambians, regardless of what we might think of them. He promised to do all he could, and from that day, he joined us every single day.
While our witness did not know the exact location, he did remember the area and insisted we not move on until that specific area was fully exhausted. We followed his advice and, after two weeks of digging, we finally found some human remains and artifacts. It was a somber moment. There was some relief but there was a lot of sadness. We came across a scattering of skulls, bones, and jaws with teeth. Due to the passage of time and the weather conditions, the bones were very brittle, and they were commingled. We found seven electric cords that had been used to bind the hands of the victims, and we also found seven items of underwear. We painstakingly went through the remains, personal effects, and artifacts, keeping them together as much as possible.
I informed the TRRC leadership of our progress and shared some photographs with them. We also informed the family members of what we found, and some of them insisted on coming to Yundum that very day. The commissioners also wanted to come and see for themselves, and the legal team decided to bring the family members. We cordoned off an area to limit movement because the ground where we had dug had yet to be backfilled, and we did not want anyone getting too close to the massive hole. I briefed Thomas Gomez and tasked him to brief the commissioners, as well as the media and family members. We briefly discussed a few talking points and, after we were satisfied with what he was to say, he got in position with Jally Senghore right beside him.
The commissioners arrived with the family members and representatives of the media, and Essa Faal got off the bus along with Baba Galleh Jallow. Essa asked me to brief the media on the
progress of the exhumations, and I said Thomas would do the briefing. I stood in the back, watching my team, feeling so proud of them and sad for the family members. I knew how physically
hard the team had worked, and how emotionally difficult this was for everyone.
The presence of the families near the exhumed remains posed difficulties, as some sobbed uncontrollably while being comforted by relatives. One woman was particularly upset and had to be restrained so she would not hurt herself as she flung herself to the ground. For me, it was the piercing scream of a young lady whose father was among those executed that was the hardest to bear. She kept calling out her father’s name and talking to him as if he could hear her. She fell into the dirt, and we had to help her up and take her to a vehicle. Many of us were in tears. I would go home with the voice of that young lady ringing in my ears. Tears well up even as I write this.
I checked with the investigators to see how they were doing.
We had more digging to do because, by our calculations, many more people were buried in Yundum than the “seven” we had found. We also received word of additional gravesites in The Gambia that we hoped to excavate.
Alagie Saidy-Barrow
