Dear Mr. President,
When you appointed me Executive Secretary of the TRRC back in late January 2018, my understanding was that your government was fully and genuinely invested in addressing past human rights violations and preventing the recurrence of future ones. I believed that under your watch, no Gambian blood will ever be shed by Gambian security forces and that with your support, the TRRC will help bring justice to the victims and the families of victims of the people who lost their lives or otherwise suffered gross human rights violations under the former regime. I am writing to you because today, I begin to feel that my conviction as stated above has been badly shaken and that ultimately, it will be hard for me to pretend to address the issue of gross human rights violations in an environment, in which the very same violations are being repeated as evidenced by the tragic killing of protesters in Faraba Banta on Monday, June 18 2018.
How can we purport to right the wrongs of the past when we are seeing a repeat of those very same wrongs in the present? How can we purport to seek justice for past violations when exactly the same violations are being committed in the here and now? How can we honestly say “Never Again” to gross human rights violations in The Gambia, when gross human rights violations are being committed right before our eyes? Surely, it would be grossly dishonest and hypocritical of me personally, to head an institution that claims to be investigating extra judicial killings of the past regime, when extra judicial killings are being committed – as in the Faraba case, right under my eyes? It is never right for Police to open fire on unarmed civilians, however tense and volatile the situation. Why can’t the Police use tear gas or rubber bullets or even batons, to disperse protesters, rather than use life bullets to kill them? We can’t have that in the New Gambia. We cannot tolerate that in the New Gambia.
Surely Mr. President, you do understand the very difficult situation in which the Faraba killings have put me and the entire mandate of the TRRC. You understand how difficult it will be for me and my colleagues to go about the country talking about the injustice of killing unarmed protesters by the former regime, while Police officers have opened fire and killed unarmed protesters in the here and now. I cannot just emphasize strongly enough in what an impossible situation the Faraba killings have put the mandate of the TRRC. Suffice it to say that the Faraba incident has just made the mandate of the TRRC a million times more complicated and difficult than it already is.
The purpose of this open letter is to both express my personal outrage at what happened at Faraba, to show how it has made my work and position much more difficult and untenable and to ask that your Government does something NOW to salvage the situation. I am writing to ask that those responsible for killing the victims of the Faraba shootings be identified, arrested and brought before a Court of Law NOW. The job you have entrusted me with, is a job I love and a job I believe can help us all build a truly just, democratic and enlightened Gambia. But it is a job I cannot do when the very things we are condemning in the past are being repeated in the present. SO PLEASE DO SOMETHING NOW – and I do not mean the usual lengthy investigations. I mean BRING THOSE WHO KILLED THE FARABA PROTESTERS TO JUSTICE NOW. This is one case that must be treated with the urgency and seriousness it deserves.
I thank you for taking the time to read this open letter and for taking FIRM, UNAMBIGUOUS ACTION NOW to demonstrate to the TRRC, the Gambian people and the International Community, that extra judicial killings are not acceptable and will Never Again be tolerated in The Gambia. #NEVERAGAIN!
Yours Sincerely,
Baba Galleh Jallow, Ph. D
Executive Secretary, TRRC
