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| Momodou |
Posted - 16 Jun 2026 : 03:29:29
Uncomfortable truths and the TRRC’s escape strategy
By Baba Galleh Jallow
The history of transitional justice reveals that most states and societies embark upon truth-seeking processes without knowing the full implications of the truths they were going to discover. There are always general understandings that uncomfortable truths in the form of gross human rights abuses will be revealed. What is not generally understood is that some of these uncomfortable truths will indicate a strong and urgent need to reform state structures and political practices that enabled gross human rights violations in the past, but remain crucial to the preservation of the interests of political actors in the present. Consequently, these uncomfortable truths are often suppressed by political actors who place their own personal interests above the national interest. A few examples will serve to illustrate this point.
In June 1974, Uganda’s President Idi Amin buckled under national and international pressure to set up Africa’s first truth commission to investigate a large number of disappearances that occurred in his country during the first four years of his regime. When the four-member “Commission of Inquiry into Disappearances of People in Uganda Since the 25th of January 1971” submitted its final report to Amin, its chair, a Pakistani judge, was promptly sacked and expelled from Uganda, a second commissioner was framed for murder and hanged, a third fled the country, while the fate of the fourth commissioner remains unknown. The first Ugandan commission was so brutally suppressed because it found two of Amin’s security outfits – the Public Safety Unit and the State Research Bureau - responsible for a majority of the disappearances. Its report was never published and the atrocities of Amin’s regime markedly escalated after 1974, earning him the infamous moniker, “the butcher of Uganda.”
Not many other subsequent truth-seeking processes in Africa, Asia and Latin America ended in such dramatic fashion. However, the reports of several truth commissions were never made public. These included the report of Zimbabwe’s Chihambakwe Commission (1983–1984), established to look into the Gukurahundi massacres, Nigeria’s Oputa Panel report (1999–2002), Nepal’s Mallik Commission report and the report of Bolivia’s National Commission of Inquiry into Disappearances (1982–1984), among several others. At least two countries with histories of gross human rights violations – Mozambique after the civil war and Cambodia after Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge - chose not to have truth commissions, citing national security concerns. They were to learn, soon enough, that some truths, however uncomfortable, cannot simply be swept under the carpet.
Across the board, official justifications for the suppression of truth commission reports and findings revolved around issues of national security and potential funding bottlenecks, especially for monetary reparations. While these justifications carry some weight, the main reasons for the suppression of truth commission findings and recommendations are political actors’ fear of accountability, protection of military and political elite positions and privileges, and a desire to maintain constitutional frameworks and provisions conducive to the individual interests of political elites. This problem is more pronounced where senior members of the sitting government are implicated in human rights abuses. In such countries, truth commission reports are unceremoniously suppressed or transitional justice processes remain stuck because powerful figures in government are afraid of facing the truth about their roles in the commission of atrocities.
Fortunately for The Gambia, these lessons were not lost upon the architects of the TRRC. By framing the truth-seeking process as a national conversation and deploying the twin strategies of inclusivity and transparency, the TRRC pre-empted and subverted the state’s capacity to suppress its findings. Inclusivity and transparency in the commission’s institutional structure and operational strategy ensured that suppressing its findings was never an option because from day one, they were broadcast live on TV, radio and social media platforms, available on YouTube, and discussed across the country in townhall meetings, rural and urban community dialogues, school assemblies and listening circles through the Never Again Campaign. By the time the state started quietly and not-so-quietly objecting to certain uncomfortable truths especially about the need to repeal repressive laws and have presidential term limits, it was too late. The cat was already out of the bag and everyone knew what needs to be done to prevent recurrence.
It is true that the TRRC Act provided that the government must publish the commission’s report within thirty days of submission. But it is also true that similar provisions in the enabling laws of many previous truth commissions did not prevent the state from suppressing their reports. Thus, it was more the fact that the by the time the commission submitted its final report to the president, its findings were already known across the country and across the world. So, suppressing its report would have been a political blunder and massive exercise in futility. Because the state had no way of suppressing the most uncomfortable findings and recommendations of the TRRC, the Gambian state today finds itself trapped between President Barrow’s unjustifiable desire to run for a third term on one hand and, on the other, unrelenting public demands for respect for human rights and the rule of law, criminal accountability for alleged perpetrators, the payment of victims’ reparations, and the implementation of political reparations through the repeal of repressive laws like the Public Order Act and the constitutional democratization of executive power especially through entrenched presidential term limits. |
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