Bamba, thanks for your comments. Injustice to one is
injustice to all. The same tactic used to devide our ethnic
groups is the same used to divide us on religious lines.
Gambians unite against tribalism, religious bigots, and
crooks.
Chi Jama
Joe Sambou
______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: There Goes Yaya Again!
Author: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list
<[log in to unmask]> at PO_EXTERNET
Date: 02/03/2000 3:29 PM
Ebou,
I wrote a reply to Ebrima Ceesay's article "crude oil saga" and I have
mentioned that people should observe Yaya Jammeh's words and deeds
critically and not just see them as they happen. Jammeh is very cunning and
manipulative in his actions and words.
I again have no doubt in what you have said about Jammeh's attitude towards
his own ethnic group. Jammeh saying he does not favour any ethnic group is
just words of politics. Its good that people like you understood this. I
wrote an article in the Daily Observer about Jammeh's extreme usage of the
word TRIBALISM in almost all his public addresses. Things are in the light
to be seen. Look at the top hierachy of the GNA and the police force. I have
talked to soldiers on thousands of occasions and they have indicated it.
This ethnic biasness can even be felt in the Gambian society especially the
western part of the country. People no more are able to socialise because of
the big suspicion Jammeh and his people created. We will not forgive any
politician who uses our differences as a tool to politicise and divide us.
The word "DIVIDE" is what is existing in the Gambia. There is no more trust
between the people.
I was never a soldier but I have a very good knowledge of what goes in the
barracks. Infact, any other Gambian should be able to make such observations
about what is presently happening. It is there to be seen and we do not need
to inform each other about it. I witness the 1994 coup and I was still in
the Gambia until November 17th when I came to the US. I have always been
critical about the regime, its leaders, their words, actions etc. This was
why I started writing because I could not just keep the analysis in my head
only. Gambians have never in their life experience an extreme usage of
ethnic or tribal difference as they do when Jammeh came to power. I will say
this again, " there is lack of maturity in the regime".
There goes a saying, "a whole village cannot be insulted and later excludes
the village head". We cannot accused Jammeh and his regime and excludes one
man as the most honest of all. That is impossible.
Well, Ebou, I for one have figured out what you are trying to show out to
the people. I wish every Gambian critically judge Jammeh and his actions.
TRUTH IS WHAT IS GOING TO PREVAIL. IT IS ONLY IN A MATTER OF TIME. KEEP UP
THE FIGHT EBOU
Seringe Bamba
>From: ebou colly <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: There Goes Yaya Again!
>Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2000 16:54:39 -0800
>
>THERE GOES YAYA AGAIN!
>
>Yaya has really done it again. Ii is unimaginable that
>he has actually appointed Lt. Ousman Sonko as
>Commander of the State Guard Unit. If Lt. Sonko's
>military bio-data was made public, military critics
>would be shocked with how such an under qualified
>person could possibly be commissioned as an army
>officer, let alone becoming the head of a whole
>Presidential Guards Unit.
>
>In the GNA, the British Army Training Team (BATT) in
>1984 set the standards derived from the syllabus of
>the British military academy Sandhurst. In the terms
>and conditions stipulated for prospective GNA officers
>therefore, all candidates must possess a minimum
>qualification of five G.C.E O' levels including
>mathematics and English language. Furthermore that
>person must sit and pass the cadet-selection exams
>conducted normally in a three-day period. It is a test
>to confirm the candidate's ability to read and write
>English satisfactorily and to measure his leadership
>quality in future operational tasks. Then finally
>there is the important area of passing the physical
>and mental test before one is considered to join the
>officer corps. I can bet that Yaya would have never
>passed that test if he had tried the army and not the
>Gendermarie.
>However at least Landing Sanneh prior to the coup made
>several attempts of the test and in all cases failed
>until he was officially forbidden from taking the
>exams any more. But as for Lt. Sonko he did not have
>the basic qualification to even apply. He was an
>ordinary sergeant with elementary local knowledge of
>how to fix radio transistors and play soccer
>impressively. That earned him a rank more than what he
>deserved in the GNA communications unit. Anyhow like
>Landing Sanneh and a hand full of regular other ranks,
>after the coup they walked into the office of Yaya or
>Edward and claimed to have actively participated in
>the coup and wanted their reward. They got the ranks
>right away. From that day on Sonko and the others
>became officers against all the set rules and
>regulations of the GNA. But what could we say, if Yaya
>could defy everything logical and grab for himself the
>highest army rank in the Gambia, colonel when there is
>no record of him ever firing a single weapon in the
>two years he spent in the army? This could be verified
>by examining the GNA Annual Personal Weapon Test
>(APWT) records kept at the army headquarters in
>Banjul. Yet Yaya terms himself a full colonel. Is
>that not a reminder of late Sergeant Samuel Doe
>decorating himself General and Sergeant Edie Amin
>elevating his rank to that of a Field Martial? The
>same twisted rules will therefore continue to justify
>the likes of Landing and Sonko to carry their ranks
>without fear or shame. But take it from me, the
>appointment of Sonko as Commander by my judgement
>tantamount to absolute abuse of military authority.
>
>The question now is why Lt. Sonko to command the State
>or Presidential guard unit out of all those more
>competent GNA officers who actually earned the rank
>the true way? Hypothetically, I would think that with
>the recent killing or arresting of his former top
>lieutenants, Yaya most likely had found their perfect
>replacement in Sonko considering his I Q level. Or it
>is very much possible that Sonko may have played a
>cardinal role in Yaya's actions to wipe out his boys
>in the name of crushing a coup. In any case however,
>the appointment of the former radio man and soccer
>player is simply another recipe for big trouble soon.
>In the first instance the GNA officers and soldiers
>will merely put up with him because it is a tyrannical
>imposition. After all most of those serving under him
>would be ten times more educated than him. So one can
>imagine what that means really. No they would not
>challenge him for fear of being framed and slaughtered
>in vain. But they would hate every bit of the
>arrangement.
>
>Responding to some pertinent questions let me start
>with the issue of tribe a focal subject of controversy
>in my first submission. I think some of my readers
>misunderstood what I was really driving at. Despite
>perceiving them as rubber stamp executives, looking at
>the composition of Yaya's cabinet there is little or
>nothing to show that he favors one ethnic group
>against another in the country. A lot of Gambians are
>certainly pleased with that. He is in fact frequently
>heard paying effective lip service in his political
>rallies on the course of ethnic tolerance and
>solidarity.
>
>But when I wrote about other ethnic groups in the army
>being the target of his crusade to kill his soldier
>enemies while members of his own ethnic group for no
>good reasons are always spared, my message was simply
>trying to reflect the sentiments of the average GNA
>soldier. My colleagues in the army Mandinkas,Jolas
>Wollofs Fullahs or name it all have the same view of
>being seriously disturbed by Yaya's killing pattern in
>the GNA and I can tell you that if left ignored as
>some critics may wish, it could eventually be a major
>source of explosion there. Considering the nature of
>our work, coupled with the constant danger of Yaya's
>killer instinct in the army where also constitutional
>or legal rights don't mean anything very few soldiers
>would ever take the risk of speaking their minds. More
>horrible tales are there in abundance but they would
>rather gossip them quietly among themselves than bring
>them to the attention of the Gambian public. They have
>long since learnt that the public doesn't give a heck
>to them when maimed or destroyed as soldiers. Anyhow
>whether Yaya's selective executions of the soldiers
>are deliberate or accidental we were all deeply
>worried about it and we strongly think that he was
>directly responsible.
>
>How many of you have ever come across GNA soldiers
>talking in the way I do? We should not be blamed for
>our silence. Several soldiers I know suffered
>tremendously in the form of torture to the brink of
>death and others have been permanently crippled with
>bullet wounds; nevertheless, they would rather keep
>quiet about it than do otherwise. Doubting their
>stories, a common tendency in Yaya's political
>protagonists, would definitely add more scares in
>their permanently traumatized emotions. Call me any
>names, if you run out of some try Lamin Kaba Bajo's
>explosive brother Sulayman, but I will continue to
>narrate my experience the way I perceived it as a live
>witness. It has nothing to do with tribalism or so.
>The truth being told when in time should be able to
>help in deterring or totally halting the recurrence of
>such crimes in the future. One of my main motivations
>for speaking out was that I thought my readers would
>have by now come up with a brilliant suggestion of how
>those dead soldiers buried at Yundum Barracks could be
>removed and given to their families for proper burial.
>It hurts to wake up every morning knowing that Lt.
>Bakary Manneh's wife still refuses to mourn her dead
>husband, as tradition requires because as far as there
>was no body her man was still alive. It is now five
>years since then but how many more years must she wait
>for Yaya to hand over those bodies while some of us
>academically toy around with the subject for its so
>called tribal undertone.
>
>Actually with Yaya, when it comes to his interest,
>tribal affiliation means nothing to him and several
>good Jolas in the Gambia know that about him. As a
>result a lot of them make their disagreement with him
>very clear to the Gambian public. He has demonstrated
>to every good Gambian of all ethnic groups that he is
>only interested in those he could use to fulfil his
>personal desires most of them having a lot to do with
>his survival techniques. Look around him properly and
>you will see mainly unethical intellectuals, dishonest
>diplomats plus those I often call the thugs and
>bandits.
>
>Having said that, I thought it relevant to reflect on
>the case of Mr. Shingle Nyassi a Jola in the UDP who
>totally opposes Yaya Jammeh and everything he stands
>for. Last year, he was abducted from his house after
>midnight on the orders of Yaya. Momodou Picka Jallow(a
>Fullah) head of the militant wing of the 22nd July
>youth movement was identified by Mr. Nyassi's wife as
>the leader of the abductors. She also spotted out few
>faces of members of the NIA. Muniru Darbo was the
>director general of the NIA. However when asked about
>the fate of Mr. Nyassi, he swore before the whole
>world that his agency had no knowledge of the
>disappearance of Mr. Nyassi. All government security
>institutions echoed the same innocent position. For
>days and weeks the matter remained a mystery until the
>British High Commissioner together with the head of
>the European Union made a tough intervention for the
>Jammeh government to explain the case or face their
>actions. Immediately, Mr. Nyassi surfaced from the
>perimeter walls of the NIA. He spoke to the
>independent Gambian press and the BBC about the
>harrowing experience he was subjected to by Yaya's
>thugs at the NIA. But his most interesting revelation
>was how a group of Jolas members of his own tribe
>after failing to intimidate him tried to use tribalism
>to change his support from the UDP to the APRC. They
>even promised to give him free land with sufficient
>money for him to build a modern house. It was really a
>cheap one. In his own words Mr. Nyassi disclosed how
>his fellow Jolas told him that he should understand
>and join the Jammeh party because the government is
>for the Jolas and he should join them like all the
>progressive ones were doing. In sharing his experience
>with the world, should Shyngle Nyassi be considered a
>potential threat to the coexisting tribes in the
>Gambia? Take it from me I think the Gambians have
>evolved beyond that although Yaya would when he finds
>it advantageous use tribe to some dangerous extremes.
>
>The question of Staff Sergeant Kanyi was raised and I
>want to say a little about him. Before the coup he was
>a corporal and the clown of the army .He could make
>every body laugh with his jokes in the camp. But after
>1994 for some strange reasons, he suddenly turned into
>a vicious executioner. However with the terrible role
>he played in the killing of the soldiers in November
>1994, the entire army after that treated him like a
>pariah and a sadistic outcast. The majority of the
>soldiers precisely stopped having anything to do with
>him anymore. He became a pitiful alcoholic especially
>when his mother walked to the Barracks one day and
>told him that she had disowned him because of the
>report she got that her son was the killer at Yundum.
>In the end he could no longer stand the mental torture
>and the isolation in the barracks. As a result he left
>the army in 1997 and was last heard working for the
>Gambia Immigrations department.
>
>Whether I took part in the atrocities was another
>question asked. I am not saying that the question was
>not given proper thought but if it was it must have
>been rather little. Logically I would not have
>willingly disclosed these stories if I had taken part
>in them. As to why I did not say anything before, I
>suppose I have sufficiently explained that above.
>
>As for Mr. Sulayman Bajo I wish to sincerely apologize
>for hurting your feeling although that does not mean
>in any way that it affects my impression of who Lamin
>Kaba Bajo is. You were to some extent right in saying
>that he joined ex-President Jawara to Dakar on the day
>of the coup to protect him as duty demanded of him.
>That's absolutely right. You were also right to say
>that he spent three weeks instead of one there. It was
>Pa Sallah Jagne the former Inspector General of Police
>who returned to the Gambia that same week and was
>thrown in jail accused of helping Jawara to escape to
>Dakar. Anyhow what you may not understand is that
>special songs of praise have been composed by various
>Gambian "griots" on the heroic role your brother
>played with the other GNA officers in masterminding
>and executing the successful overthrow of ex-President
>Jawara. And he is often seen dashing those praise
>singers with money for the nice songs he really enjoys
>from them. In other words, your brother now associates
>himself with those who actually toppled ex-President
>Jawara and not those who helped to protect him all the
>way to Dakar. And it still remains a mystery why
>Jammeh jailed Pa Sallah Jagne for it but appointed
>your brother in a top government position when they
>did the same thing of going to Dakar and back. If you
>don't have answers and you can't find any feel free to
>do what you have shown to be very good at doing-INSULT
>YOUR HEART OUT.
>
>Ebou Colly.
>
>
>
>
>
>__________________________________________________
>Do You Yahoo!?
>Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger.
>http://im.yahoo.com
>
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