Dear editor,
Someone would be hard pressed to find differences between the Yahya Jammeh regime and the new Coalition government under President Adama Barrow.
First, it’s already established that some of the same elements who helped Yahya Jammeh sink the Gambia into a state of despair, marked by deaths, torture, hopelessness and economic ruin, still run the country.
Second, the Coalition government under President Adama Barrow has demonstrated, time and again, both by words and actions, its total indifference to the concerns of Gambian citizens.
Thirdly, the Coalition still maintains the undemocratic institutions and laws Yahya Jammeh instituted for the purpose of suppressing and oppressing Gambians.
The lesson Gambians should have learnt and immediately acted on, on swearing day in January 20, 2017, was to immediately outlaw the laws and practices that made it easy to torture and take human life.
As such, it is now suspected by the youths that the person whose death was being protested Wednesday, was the victim of torture.
If this is true, the police or SIS boss ought to lose their job for allowing torture, causing the loss of a human life.
Torture is illegal and doesn’t exist in law, or the constitution; in fact, in all the other Constitutions that I am familiar with, it it affirmatively articulated that torture is illegal.
In this particular case, government has a lot to answer for, in investigating the circumstances why torture was used on a human being, and whether that person is a citizen or not, is immaterial.
And the government’s Press Release the other day did not go far enough, for there is this glaring contradiction between what government stated and what has happened in the country since January 2017.
Commitment to democracy means preserving human life; not taking it.
But government’s stated commitment to democracy should’ve been exemplified by outlawing all the ways in which citizens can be abused to the point of losing their lives.
The family of the dead person must file a wrongful death case, and ask for millions from the government.
Mathew K Jallow
USA
