The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
Our heartfelt and sincere condolences to all those
who lost their
little ones, and to the family of our young colleague
Omar Barrow.
They all died in the field of honour.
In the events we just lived through and are still
living, the actors
could be categorised into three groups: the good
ones, the bad
ones and the ugly ones. The good ones were the
peaceful
students who were sincerely demonstrating for
government to
address their demand for speedy justice in the two
cases that
they had clearly lamented over and over. And the
security forces
that showed restraint.
The bad ones were the students? and vandals who
engaged in
wanton destruction of properties. This was
unwarranted and has
been condemned by all and sundry.
The ugly gave the orders and the others carried them
out,
causing the unwarranted maiming of innocent school
CHILDREN
with guns fired from, by Gambian standards, their
fathers, uncles,
brothers and cousins. This use of live ammunition has
been
strongly condemned by the public. But how did we get
to that
Order to Fire Live Ammunition? The Shoot to Kill
Order! In fact,
who gave that drastic order?
For us, the way the security services handled the
matter was
wrong, very wrong indeed! Imagine just 5, sometimes
10 security
operatives facing hundreds of children; the result
was obvious -
they were outnumbered and so overpowered by the
students and
had to flee sometimes to avoid the rains of stones
and other
objects.
The government will not tell us that it didn't know
about the
planned demonstration, as it warned against it. If we
were the
ones, with our little knowledge, giving out orders,
we would have
lined up hundreds of security forces and offered a
security
cordon to the students. Should things get out of
hand, as
happens elsewhere, the hundreds officers already at
hand, on
the spot, could deal with the situation USING ONLY
TEAR GAS!
and that would have in the end disperse the students.
The late
Jallow Jallow's associates and other students who
faced the
colonial administration and later the 1st Republic
know what we
are talking about. 10, 16 or even 20 isolated
officers could not
have contained the various groups of students and
vandals.
If this right approach was taken, there wouldn't have
been any
deaths. International conventions and humanitarian
law forbid
security forces entering shelters like the Red Cross
premises, so
why kill Barrow in that premises? What was the use of
all the
resources put to organising seminars on humanitarian
law for our
security forces?
It beats our imagination that government should at
this point in
time attribute the responsibility of what it called
"the carnage" to
the UNARMED GAMSU. Government must be up there and
assume responsibility for any commissions and
omissions
committed by its servants; in other countries,
resignations would
have been tendered by now.
The way forward is to bring to book all those, who
have one way
or the other played a role in this ugly matter by
mishandling the
situation. That is what the rule of law requires.
That is what the
dignity of Gambians demand.
Our hearts bled the whole of Monday evening and
continue to
bleed even now as we visualise, after we were told
the picture at
the morgue of the bodies laid there, with their
little faces covered,
their school socks and shoes on.
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