The Gambia: Yahya Jammeh to EU: Go to hell; Prison executions blown out of proportions

By Mathew K Jallow

Yahya Jammeh's shocking statements last week that the executions of; not nine, but twenty-five innocent Mile Two Prison inmates “was blown out of proportions” and telling the European Union “to go to Hell,” veered well past the point of insensitivity into something very close to insanity. The twisted mindset that compelled Yahya Jammeh to even enunciate such sanguinary commentary maybe insensitive, but insane; Yahya Jammeh is not. Like everything else he has done, Yahya Jammeh is merely putting up a brave front that on the surface projects calm comfort, and to give the impression that he can stand up to the powerful European Union, but in his mind, he is a nervous wreck, in despair and in utter fear of the intense political pressure now being brought to bear to expose the ruthless underhandedness with which he has so cruelly exercised power. Nowadays, Yahya Jammeh is a man consumed by severe internal turmoil and on the verge of buckling under the weight of this unforgiving strain. For such a universally hated person as Yahya Jammeh, with everything to lose, this veneer of numbness and detachment from the Gambia's familiar issues of state sanctioned murders, forced disappearances, and the constant arrest and detentions of the innocent that have so profoundly tortured the Gambian psyche, only illustrates the sheer depth of Yahya Jammeh's apprehension about his regime's future survival prospects. For years now, Yahya Jammeh's overarching concern has not been the business of governing; instead he has been totally consumed by political tyranny and economic exploitation of the Gambian state. Today, a year after the national elections, not a single cabinet has survived one month without the notorious reshuffling that has bedeviled his listless regime. Not unlike everything else, the frequent cabinet changes are far from being merely tangentially related to the perennial chaos and crisis pervading every aspect of life in our country. Rather, the familiar and crippling ministerial musical-chairs, like the country's permanent state of Martial Law, is also at the very heart of this disastrous conundrum so emblematic of the dysfunction of the Yahya Jammeh regime.

Just last week, an internet video of Yahya Jammeh fecklessly railing against the European Union surfaced to the complete and utter dismay and disgust of most Gambians. The video exposed his extreme discomfort and the visible disconnectedness of the eclectic group of miserable looking cabinet ministers nervously hunched, humped and crouched in filial silence. In a monotonous hour-long soliloquy, Yahya Jammeh's stunning lack of a sense of reality was an eerie reminder of Idi Amin Dada's infamous ministerial meetings which often ended in the deaths of some of his ministers. But, Yahya Jammeh's trivializing defiance of the EU is a losing battle; a deja vous likely to condemn Gambia to the specter of economic sanctions not unlike those that collapsed the Iraqi and Iranian economies then and now. The prospect of Yahya Jammeh tarring Gambia with the same punishing political outcome must be a wake-up call to all Gambians, but it is common knowledge that Yahya Jammeh is totally impervious to reason and lacks the intellectual fortitude to make sound judgments. The EU's capacity to wreck economic havoc and totally incapacitate Yahya Jammeh's regime is not in dispute, and his cynical defiance and downright disrespectful posturing will not make sanctions less likely. The European Union's ground-breaking commitment to Gambia's interest is underpinned by a commitment to moral rectitude and the return of the rule of law. As determined and as focused as the EU is, Yahya Jammeh's posturing will likely push Gambia towards the brink of economy catastrophe in the event he does not relent. The EU bureaucrats cannot be bribed, as Yahya Jammeh does with breathtaking frequency with selfish IMF and World Bank officials from corrupt Third World countries. The EU will never capitulate to Yahya Jammeh's madding narcissism and notorious charm offensives. Moreover, the Honorable Dr. Momodou Sedat Jobe, Gambia's internationally renowned political and diplomatic luminary will not make it any easier for Yahya Jammeh as he travels around Europe to huddle with European leaders in addressing Gambia's bloody, long drawn-out struggle for political liberty. Additional to Dr. Jobe's ongoing tour, Dr. Amadou S Janneh, the Civil Society Associations Gambia's (CSAG) newly elected Campaign Strategist, and Mr. Banka Manneh, CSAG's Chairman, plan travels this summer to meet with European and US officials as well as Diaspora Gambian communities aimed at uniting all willing Gambians in the struggle against Yahya Jammeh's dictatorship.

That said; Yahya Jammeh's declaration that the universally condemned executions of, not nine, but twenty-five innocent Mile Two Prison inmates on August 23rd 2012, “was blown out of proportions” is a disgusting abstraction of reality. If anything, it is illuminates his dangerously stolid mindset and questions his cognitive fitness to serve. Tabara Samba's brutal gang rape before her executions, the execution of a mentally insane person, Abubacarr Yarboe, and the execution of Momodou Darboe, whose death sentence was commuted to life more than twenty years earlier, are all snapshots of the lawlessness and the screaming madness that surround the Mile Two Prison executions. The unexhausted legal remedies the law allowed were ostentatiously abrogated with mindless impunity. Needless to say, the executions themselves were a tragic national aberration of monumental proportions, besides being a glaring exhibition of an unmitigated disregard of the Constitution and the laws of the land. Even today, nearly six months later, the executions still defy imagination. The European Union's recent demand for the disclosure of the burial grounds of the all executed comes in the wake of the incessant demands by Gambians for the retrieval of the executed corpses to grant them decent burials. It is understandable that the European Union officials may be skeptical, but every Gambian is aware of Yahya Jammeh's godless human sacrifice practices. To-date, nearly twenty children have been sacrificed in planned and staged motorcade accidents that often lure children to their merciless deaths. The rush for goodies thrown out by Yahya Jammeh and his helpers from heavily militarized speeding motorcades have so far claimed the lives of more than a dozen children and this primitive tribal practice of child sacrifice stopped only after the media realized that the eerily similar deaths were after all planned human sacrifices; not accidental deaths. But these are uncommonly difficult days for Yahya Jammeh, and with pressure mounting around him, he is likely to execute Gambians again to ward off “evil-spirits” and “save” his military regime from collapse. Gambians at home must, therefore, be vigilant, but above all, mindful of Yahya Jammeh's conditioned and effortless capacity to kill again. We are in the nexus between the EU's determination and Yahya Jammeh's familiar stubbornness, and Coalition for Change Gambia and Civil Society Associations-Gambia urged the European Union to never surrender to Yahya Jammeh's puerile comedies and banal threats. This time, EU's position must be the unequivocal support of the Gambian people in this time of desperate need for political change.

Mathew K Jallow, one of The Gambia's vociferous opponent and critic of Yahya Jammeh's military regime, has been exiled in the US for more than a decade.