YAYA MUST
RESIGN
The most logical course of action now is for the
immediate removal of Yaya Jammeh from office. Gambians
do not need to wait for any time-buying investigation
or inquest on something that is evidently clear to
every honest living person, Gambian or non-Gambian.
Anymore minute wasted would tantamount to making the
Gambians ever look like the slaughterable beasts Yaya
termed them to be or the conforming sheep roped by the
butcher. For him to masquerade behind an ayatollah’s
image, quoting the holy Quaran here and there and
acting as if he was not in charge of the direct orders
is enough a deceptive crime for him to face a firing
squad.
The real Yaya we know was not the one the Gambians saw
on TV the last time. He does not talk or act like the
way he pretended and he cannot write good English like
that either. He therefore must have as usual hopped in
bed with one of his intellectual prostitutes and was
provided with something fairly sensible to read. At
least that did save him from saying more stupid things
than those who were trying to justify the terrible
massacre in the first days.
There is no doubt that he was directly responsible for
the order to shoot and kill; and most likely, he might
have also been responsible for advising Isatou Njie
Saidy and Ousman Badjie to tell those criminal lies
during their first press release. As for those two,
including Baboucarr Jatta, they are certainly guilty
of carrying out an unlawful order of the worst kind in
history- the killing of unarmed school children. They
must be punished for it.
Anyway when criminals commit grave crimes, they
always unconsciously leave an incriminating trail that
when scrutinized, is often very visible to the
ordinary eye of honest observers. Invariably, lies
told to hide criminal actions are generally punctuated
by hidden flaws that could lead to the actual truth
when followed objectively. Take for instance the
ridiculous lie that the freed criminals in the police
stations broke into the police armories and got the
weapons they used to kill the children. Look at the
logic behind that. By standard operational procedures
(SOP) there is nowhere in this world where both arms
and ammunitions are kept in the same armory. So it
means that the criminals were either sitting on their
ammunition boxes while on detention waiting for the
incident to occur or, they also found the police
ammunition store which they broke into and stole the
bullets they used. Naturally both stories would not
have made any sense if they had attempted to explain
where the bullets came from after the guns were taken.
The criminals could not have been under detention with
any kinds of ammunition; and I found it absolutely
impossible that at that spontaneous and chaotic
situation, those escaping criminals could be so crafty
or thoughtful to arm them selves properly. It beats
any intelligent person’s mind to imagine the criminals
breaking into the armories first and then breaking
into the ammunition stores, getting the magazines,
loading and unlocking the weapons and then finally
launching into the streets for the singular purpose of
just shooting at the children. Hello, what were they
trying to tell us? Naturally the lies could not be
sustained for too long because the very Gambians who
witnessed it saw the whole killings done by the
security forces using live bullets from AK47 assault
rifles. It only reminded me of all those lies told
after the killings of innocent Gambians orchestrated
by Yaya in the past.
However the worst lie that made me really disgusted
with Isatou Njie, Ousman Badjie and Baboucarr Jatta
was the rubber-bullet gun story. I know the weapon
inventory in the Gambia Army the way I know my
fingers. Starting from Yundum, Kartong, Farafenni,
Kudang to Basse, none of the armories there have a
single rubber-bullet gun. There are only eight or ten
old ones at the Fajara barracks armory, which the
police usually borrow when raiding criminal hideouts.
That is to further say that even the police do not
have them at all. So where the heck did they get those
guns? Were they from the armory of Yaya’s “Allah”?
In 1996 there was a minor demonstration by the Muslim
high school children about their right to use the
Fajara beach when the police tried to deny them access
to enjoy the tourist resort. The police in tackling
that situation beat and arrested some children. Barely
24 hours after, Yaya removed from office the Inspector
General of Police Gibril Joof, a senior operation
commander Turo Jawneh and I think the school
authorities also got some share of the punishment.
Yaya had accused the police and the school principle
for being too high-handed on the children. That is the
typical style of Yaya’s reaction to such national
crisis in genera. If he was not guilty he would have
instantly started dismissing, arresting, re-deploying,
swearinr to bury people six-foot deep and above all
wearing his frightening killer- baboon face.
This time however despite the fact that the whole
country somehow pointed the accusing finger to Badjie
and Jatta in particular, Yaya came and masqueraded as
a pious Ayatollah, quoting the Quaran and talking as
if his absence during the massacre should exonerate
him altogether. Yet he would not comment on the
public’s demand to punish the executioners. People I
spoke to in the Gambia me surprising reports about how
Yaya looked absolutely pitiful on TV, his face changed
like an honest person telling the truth from his
heart. However, as some one rightly put it, in this
desperate moment if those accused were not Jattas and
Badjies, but Ceesays, Manjangs, Jallows, or Jobes,
Yaya would have appeared in his true demonic colors
huffing and puffing, dismissing and arresting
everywhere with little or no consideration for initial
investigations. Did he not act like that in the last
dubious coup? How many people were victimized since
then without investigation?
But in the final analysis, he could not act because he
ordered Isatou Njie Saidy, Ousman Badjie and Baboucarr
Jatta to open fire on the kids and kill as many as
possible. Those of us who know the way Yaya runs his
government, whenever he travels, he is given minute by
minute report of all the activities taking place in
the country regardless of how trivial they may seem,
much more when they it was that big this time. In fact
my intelligence sources told me that he gave the order
to shoot the kids the day before, when he was leaving
for Cuba and was told that the school children were
going to hold the demonstration by force after they
were denied a permit.
This is not the first time he gave such evil orders.
After the Kartong attack on the 21st July 1997, he
sent the late Almamo Manneh and some of his Former
State Guard thugs to the army headquarter with an
order that the captured Lieutenants- L.F.Jammeh,
Alieu Bah and Jarju-must be executed forthwith. At
first we thought the guards were joking, but when Yaya
in a nasty mood called from the State House insisting
that the captured soldiers must be killed to set
examples we refused to carry out those unlawful
orders. We told him that killing them was out of it,
but if he wanted to do it by him self we should sign a
paper with him for their formal hand over. At last he
relented. If we had carried out that order he perhaps
would have turned around tomorrow and say that he was
not aware.
Baboucarr Jatta has said it over and over that on the
13th of November 1994, although Yaya was at the State
House the afternoon Lt. Saye and the other officers
were killed, the final order to kill them came from
Yaya. He said that the final order came through a
telephone call he made to Edward Singhateh. And Jatta
further said that because he was the one trying to
stop the killing, Yaya was so upset with him that he
decided to snubbed him for almost a month. Haven’t we
learnt that Yaya blessed the killing of Koro Ceesay at
the airport the night before? Yet when he returned, he
went to see Koro’s parents and even shed crocodile
tears there pretending to be sympathetic to the family
and promising to leave no stone unturned to catch the
culprits. Given some little time, Baboucarr Jatta
would soon start disclosing in dinner tables how they
were ordered by Yaya to kill the children. He would of
course make it looked as if everybody but himself was
a party to the crime. Three things are known about the
Chief of Staff’s odd character: he eats a lot, sleeps
excessively and could easily spill his guts out if he
is not hungry or sleepy.
So Gambians enough is enough. If this great chance to
remove this monster out of office is not taken and we
play by his tricks until things are neutralized the
way Yaya is hoping now, then I can bet that the next
disaster would be too much to handle and might destroy
the country forever. So come together in a common
voice and force him out before it is too late. Start
thinking about the date to start the civil
disobedience for Yaya to resign for killing our dear
children. The whole world is behind the families of
the dead children. We will help in every to support
the move to its success. And believe in me, it is
going to be far more easy that you may think. I am
glad that every decent Gambian at home and abroad is
also behind the families of the kids.
We cannot wait for his removal so that we could build
a memorial site that would remain a permanent reminder
to everybody in the Gambia about the evil day of the
10th of April, the year 2000. It would also be a
reminder of the period when the Gambia was ruled by
Yaya Abdulasis Jamus Hunkung Jammeh, a fake doctor,
fake colonel, fake Alhagie and very low life scum’my.
Ebou Colly
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