It seems this case of tolerance will never die and it will be the new
tour de force for apologists of the dictatorship to revamp their flagging
support online. One can understand the historical amnesia of some of these
Fascist apologists because with some people, personal relationships no matter
how corruptible they may sound in defending, is dearer than the truth.
    Perhaps it will not be remiss of me to remind these people that no one is
keeping any Jammeh supporter from making known his/her views. I don't board
flights to Banjul or Paris to stop people from using their PCs/Laptops and
sending their postings in. If at any rate these Jammeh lickspittles have
suddenly become reticent, it is because they don't have a case worth arguing
in front of rational beings. And they know lies and twisted facts will
inexorably be shredded to pieces once they appear here.
     Who on earth can justify THE ORDER OF JAMMEH TO PARAMILITARY FORCES TO
SHOOT AT UNARMED SCHOOL CHILDREN ON A PEACEFUL DEMONSTRATION? These children
were not tolerated but we should tolerate the lies and fabrication from
Tombong, Essa et al in the name of tolerance? Are you people serious? Or is
it simply you have no blood relatives murdered in broad daylight by these
Jammeh goons and so it easy to day dream in your relative comfort of that
ideal world of tolerance whilst people are in pain and nothing is being done
about it? The perpetrators of these crimes are walking the streets of Banjul
in relative comfort whilst the victims bleed in hospitals with little or no
basic medical care whilst some of them are rotting beneath the ground, and
you expect me to tolerate such a situation? Young lives wasted unnecessarily
and in the defence of a crazy kleptomaniac who is taking the Gambia fast down
the drain. You expect me to tolerate such an intolerant situation? You expect
me tolerate someone who wouldn't tolerate me? If this is not gross naivety
then it must be petty hypocrisy masking itself as benign well meaning concern
for tolerance.
    I have said that I can tolerate virtually all kinds of people
irrespective of their leanings or origins socially, politically and
economically. I have friends, colleagues, intimates and the rest of it who
are as different from me as night is of day. Yet [and rightly so] they expect
tolerance and do get it from me. But this comes with a price tag; they have
to tolerate me as well. If they don't, then they forfeit the right to expect
of me tolerance. In short tolerance is hinged on the principle that you live
and let live. Like rights, the day you encroach on another's or stop being
tolerant, you cease having the right to expect it from another. As Karl
Popper once put it lucidly, "we should therefore claim, in the name of
tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant." Like my forerunner
Popper, I'm claiming that it is incumbent on us to be intolerant to an
intolerable person like Jammeh in the name of tolerance.
    If the tolerance that some of you had just realised as missing in Gambian
discourse was something in Jammeh, then people wouldn't even adopt such
stances as being sick and tired of the situation back home. I wonder when you
will have the guts to write to Jammeh directly or call him personally and
preach to him the need to tolerate others with opposing view points. If that
message gets into his thickhead, we wouldn't have to express our disgust each
time he orders the maiming, shooting and murder of Gambian lives with such
impunity. Of all the people that had either directly or indirectly been
killed/murdered since 1994, none of them's family has had any chance to
access to social justice. And we still have people who have the nerve to
expect us to be tolerant of such a situation? The long and short of it is
that with Jammeh and everything he stands for, Gambians have come to the
point of no longer accepting any nonsense from these people. Enough is enough.
    With respect to the lady who raised the whole issue, if you can name me
any Scandinavian/European country where intolerant and extreme groups like
the neo Nazis/Fascists are tolerated then I will you know that you are just
great. It is all very well to sit in the relative comfort of your house in
Europe drooling about tolerance whilst those who are at the receiving end of
Jammeh's intolerance each day has to suffer and expect of them to tolerate
such a situation. History does have a buck you know. That is worth
remembering in these difficult periods.
Till then I shall continue to be intolerant to the intolerant notwithstanding
all the heckles and uneasy glances I get from people. Each time the Jammeh
gang send anything preposterous on the List, I shall not relent in throttling
it of the life force and dancing on its grave. Call it intolerance and by God
it is Intolerance with a capital I.
Hamjatta Kanteh










hkanteh

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