I think the possession of any form of ID would be primarily to the holder's
advantage.  People die in road accidents or in civil violence such as during
the 1981 abortive coup and they may end up in the morgue waiting for
identification.  To this day some families in The Gambia don't have a clue
as to how their loved ones "disappeared" on the fateful days of July
30th-31st, 1981.  Most of them ended up in mass graves!  Some form of ID
does help, indeed, albeit not at the cost of a beating or "monkey-dance".

However, when the ID card becomes a tool for the harassment, intimidation,
and humiliation of innocent people its whole purpose is negated and the very
acquisition of one becomes a distasteful process.

On countless occasions during and after the Jawara government I witnessed
the persistent questioning of all light-skinned looking people to produce ID
cards while on cross-country public transportation, assuming that all such
people are Fulanis and all Fulanis are Guineans.  On one such occasion, a
friend of mine who was a Staff Sergeant in the then Gendarmerie nearly got
pulled off a public bus going up-country because he was light-skinned.
Addressing him in somewhat broken pulaar in a not so polite manner, the
police officer asked him to produce his ID. Imagine the look on the face of
the officer's when my friend tendered his gendarme ID and spoke to him in
Mandinka, for he is a Mandinka.  The greatest twist to this incident is that
the officer did not ask our other friend sitting next to the gendarme for
any ID, yet he was the Fulani.  Perhaps because he was of a dark complexion.
  We were quite sure that there were other West African nationals in the
bus, but who for a discriminatory reason were not paraded off the bus like
the poor Guinean Fulanis.

Recently, The Independent carried  the story of a certain Muktarr Jallow,
who got seriously beaten by Immigration officers in Talingding. They had
suspected him of being a foreigner due to his Fulani traits and stopped him
as he was passing by their office to ask for his ID.  They disputed that the
ID he produced for them was not authentic and set upon beating him
regardless of the fact that he was born in Talingding.

Most African governments are notorious for using such ploys to intimidate
political or ethnic minorities as is the present case of former IMF deputy
GM, Allasan Drame Outtara in Cote Ivoire. We also know that ruling parties
in Africa give IDs to nationalities from neighbouring countries specifically
to boost up their electoral votes.

The APRC government should treat people with respect, for respect is nothing
if it is not mutual.  The arbitrary detention and humiliation of people
regardless of their political affiliation, ethnic origin or nationality go
against the grain of basic human respect.





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