Why Deyda’s killer is still at large By Baba Galleh Jallow On Thursday, December 16, 2004, unidentified gunmen drove an unmarked taxi alongside journalist Deyda Hydara’s car and shot him dead. Ever since, there have been persistent calls for the Gambian authorities to investigate the murder and bring the perpetrators to book. Unfortunately, this is unlikely to happen. The reason is simple: Deyda Hydara was killed by Yahya Jammeh himself, on the orders of Yahya Jammeh, or on behalf of Yahya Jammeh. Either he himself pulled the trigger, had someone pull the trigger, or knows exactly who pulled the trigger. The Jammeh dictatorship, like all other dictatorships, see the exercise of political power as waging a war against their own people – at least those segments of the population who dare to question their words and actions. It is a sad reality of international politics that the notion of war is largely confined to military encounters between two or more armed entities, whether these are international or intra-national. The concept that governments wage war against their own populations is yet to be sufficiently lodged in the human consciousness. Yet, this is exactly what has been happening and continues to happen in every country ruled by a dictator. Having the guns of the security and armed forces at his beck and call, Yahya Jammeh has never hesitated to have anyone he considers a potential threat to his grip on power shot dead. Whether the shots are heard as in the case of the dozen or so student demonstrators on April 10-11, 2000, or in the case of the November 11, 1994 incident, or the case of Deyda Hydara on December 16, 2004; – or whether dead bodies just turn up as in the case of Ousman Koro Ceesay and the 44 Ghanaians; or whether they simply disappear from the face of the earth as in the case of Daba Marenah and his companions; or in the case of journalist Chief Ebrima Manneh – the fact remains that Yahya Jammeh sees politics as a war in which all opponents deserve to die. That Yahya Jammeh considers politics as a state of war stems from a couple of factors. First, his military background. As a soldier trained to kill, Yahya Jammeh feels that politics is merely an extension of the actual battlefield. Of course, having long decided that he knows everything there is to know about life, death, and everything else, Yahya Jammeh has failed to learn anything politically “useful” to him since 1994. His blinding hubris makes sure that he feels supremely confident that he knows all there is to know and do not need to be told what to do or not to do. If he decides that politics – and perhaps life in general – is a war, then it must be a war and he reserves the right to kill in self defense and self preservation, just like in the actual military battlefield. His appeal to the right to self defense is further legitimated by his determination to hold the Gambian people hostage for as long as he is a life. Of course, Yahya Jammeh does not believe that he is holding anyone hostage. He does not believe that he is doing anything wrong by staying on in power to the exclusion of everyone else. If Jawara stayed in power for 30 years, why not Yahya Jammeh? He has said these very words over and over again, in spite of his well documented promise in the aftermath of the July 1994 coup to make sure that no president stays in power beyond ten years. But what are promises in a war in which dangerous enemies lurk in every corner trying to bring him down? And who can do anything about it anyway if he decides to stay in power for as long as he wants? Because politics is a war, he will keep his guns ready to kill anyone who tries to deny him his right to power. If anyone wants to be president, they would have to fight and physically subdue him. Short of that, he is going to stay in power. To hell with everything thing else. Bereft of the intellectual and moral resources he needed to counter Deyda’s cohesive and persistent arguments on the need for the observance of justice, human rights, the rule of law, and commonsense in his government, Yahya Jammeh simply had him killed, just like he had Koro Ceesay, the students, Daba Marenah and others killed. In Yahya Jammeh’s conception of Gambian politics as a war, Deyda Hydara represented just another enemy soldier who, though armed only with a pen, was out to cause his defeat and downfall. And so he easily justified Deyda’s murder as an act of self defense. The bad news for Yahya Jammeh is that he is not going to get away with it as he thinks he will. No one gets way with murder – not forever. No one, especially one under the glaring lights of international scrutiny like the president of a country, can kill his citizens with impunity and expect to live happily ever after. The Jammeh regime cannot investigate and catch Deyda’s killer because they are Deyda’s killer. This was the scenario in the student massacres of April 2000. Having ordered that the students be shot dead, Yahya Jammeh could not then turn around and have those who merely followed his orders punished. After all, this is war. Eventually though, Yahya Jammeh will have to pay for his crimes against humanity. His government will not investigate the killing of Deyda Hydara. But neither will he escape the very long arm of justice forever. If he dies without standing trial for his murder of innocent souls, his soul will burn in eternal hell. There is no escaping that punishment. Furthermore, there is no way that Yahya Jammeh can erase the memory of Deyda Hydara. The international community and the Gambian people – those who love truth and justice – will continue to wave Deyda Hydara's name, image and spirit in Jammeh’s face, and will continue demanding that his killers be brought to justice. In spite of his murder, Deyda Hydara lives on and continues to inspire in us the love of truth and justice, and to continue the fight against the injustice and tyranny that so brutally and callously snatched him from his loved ones. ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://listserv.icors.org/archives/gambia-l.html To Search in the Gambia-L archives, go to: http://listserv.icors.org/SCRIPTS/WA-ICORS.EXE?S1=gambia-l To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to: [log in to unmask] ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤