Kibily, I don't think that anyone can blame the teacher for the tragic series of events that happened after Ebrima was handed over to the law. He had no way of foreseeing what was to happen next, and no disrespect to the deceased, but there are circumstances when the law has to be called to control unruly students. The real culprits here are the law enforcement authorities and the people that have tried to cover-up this atrocious crime. The law enforcement authorities and, more recently, the army have always had a reputation of being extremely cruel to suspects, whether guilty or not. I vividly remember the late Sgt. Kujabi repeatedly head butting and slapping suspects as his method of interrogation. Usually the suspect would confess immediately just out of fear for his or her own life. I witnessed grown men getting whipped by overzealous police officers and also heard stories about cases where the suspects were shocked with live electric wires. To make the issue worse, J!
awara disbanded the field force and formed the GNA, and they too started to violate the human rights of the average Gambian. Just based on this brief history, one can clearly see that the problem is a human rights issue and average Gambian's apathy towards this alarming trend. No one deserves to be beaten, tortured or killed without a fair trial in a court of law.
What irks me the most is the ambiguity of the autopsy report that is published in the Independent newspaper. This is an excerpt from the report that describes the official cause of death:
Quote
On the Cause of Death, the report cites 'Infaret of the right lung located in the middle lobe and base with severe hemorrhagic necrosis. Severe edema of both lungs. Acute respiratory insufficiency, Hepatic esteatosis.'
Unquote
As you can see, one has to be a doctor to figure out what the cause of death is. I even tried using a dictionary to look for the meanings of infaret and estatotis. The language used to describe the cause of death was not put in layman's terms simply because someone wants to cover up what transpired.
The time has come when we to confront these human rights abuses. We can no longer afford to sit back and watch while the humans rights of innocent civilians are being infringed upon by the very people that are supposed to protect us. The news media should stop regurgitating these verbatim reports from official sources, and instead start launching their own investigative reports. Independent, are you listening? In addition, we the Gambian public should abandon this "laissez-faire" attitude and start being more vigilant about these abuses. Perhaps and independent, non biased investigative team should be started to investigate reports of abuses by the military, and also to figure out ways of curbing this disturbing trend. In the meantime, God bless our beloved country.
Yus
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