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Momodou
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 Posted - 03 Sep 2012 : 14:33:40
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President Jammeh Defies the Whole World
By D. A. Jawo
Daily News: Published on Monday, September 03, 2012
President Yahya Jammeh is no stranger to controversy which has eventually transformed him into being the ‘enfant terrible’ of the sub-region; hardly left with any friends or admirers among his peers. Since his assumption of power in 1994 through a coup d’etat, he has been embroiled in controversies, either through his speeches or actions. We can all recall, for instance, his unsubstantiated claims to have found a cure for HIV/AIDS and other incurable diseases as well as his uncompromising scathing criticisms of the west at every available opportunity.
However, he seems to have crossed the red line this time round when he went ahead in defiance of both public opinion and the loud appeals by the international community, to execute nine people on a special occasion like Koriteh day which is the time for forgiveness and reconciliation, while at the same time vowing to execute all those on death row in the country by mid-September.
Of course there is no denying the fact that The Gambia is a sovereign nation which does not need anyone’s permission to implement its laws, but it is also part and parcel of the international community and therefore, President Jammeh cannot afford to ignore the whole world and behave as if the Gambia is in another planet.
Therefore, his decision to go ahead with the secret executions of the nine people on one of the holiest days of the Islamic calendar in defiance of all the appeals from all parts of the world, seems to beat anyone’s imagination. Apart from the wrong timing of the executions, it is also quite apparent that they were not carried out in accordance with the law. Therefore, without allowing the due process of law to take its full course, what happened seems to tantamount to extra-judicial executions.
Apart from the several questions about the fairness of our judicial system, there are also certain basic legal procedures that needed to have been followed before such sentences were carried out. However, there is clear indication that most of those procedures were never followed to the letter before those people were executed. Everything seems to have been done in a hurry and without due regard to the law, apparently in fulfillment of the promise made to the religious leaders on Koriteh day by President Jammeh.
Therefore, the very fact that he swore that he was going to kill the death row prisoners and within a few hours it was carried out without following the due process of the law, shows how his word now supersedes Gambian law.
President Jammeh is a layman as far the law is concerned, and therefore, he may not know most of those basic legal provisions that should have been fulfilled before such executions were carried out. Therefore, everyone had expected that legal luminaries like the Attorney General and Minister of Justice Lamin Jobarteh and other professionals within the administration should have guided him to ensure that the law was obeyed to the letter. It was therefore quite a disappointment to most people that such professionals who are supposed to know the law abysmally failed to ensure that the correct procedures were adhered to before the prisoners were executed. As a result therefore, there is no way that they can also escape being seen as willing accomplices to such illegality and therefore culpable of an illegal action.
It is indeed hard to see what President Jammeh and his regime, and indeed the country stand to benefit from such open defiance of public opinion and appeals by the international community not to go ahead with the executions.
Therefore, by going ahead with the executions and vowing to execute even more people, President Jammeh seems to have put this country on a collision course with the rest of the civilized world. The action has also gone against the resolutions of the African Union and other organizations like the Commonwealth that have encouraged member states not to carry out death sentences and other capital punishment and which the Gambia is bound to respect. Therefore, by not only re-introducing the death penalty but even going to the extent of executing people shows how far this country has degenerated in its lack of respect for basic human rights.
Two of those executed on Koriteh day were Senegalese nationals, which action has seriously angered the Senegalese authorities to the extent that they had to summon the Gambian High Commissioner in Dakar for an explanation. In his comment on the issue, President MackySall accused the Gambia of violating the Vienna Convention of 1963 which makes it obligatory on the Gambian authorities to have notified their Senegalese counterparts not only about the decision to execute its citizens, but to have involved them at every stage of their conviction and sentence. It therefore either means that the Attorney General and our other legal professionals did not know about the existence of such a convention or they deliberately ignored it.
Therefore, this action by the government of the Gambia has the potential to create bad blood between the two neighbouring states, and it will be the ordinary people, particularly Gambians who stand to suffer most from any such fall out. It is therefore extremely important that President Jammeh and his regime need to always carefully weigh the consequences of all their actions, lest they end up harming the very people in whose name they always claim to be acting.
It is no doubt why many people all over Africa and beyond are now calling for the removal of Africa’s foremost human rights body; the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights, whose headquarters is located in Banjul. It is indeed quite paradoxical for the Gambia to continue to host such an important continental human rights body and yet the country has now earned the reputation of being the biggest human rights violator in Africa.
While it is hard to say for certain what motivated President Jammeh to go ahead with the executions at the very time he did, and in complete defiance of all appeals, but there is a high possibility that certain actions which may seem quite unrelated with the execution were indeed part of the process. One such action was the arbitrary closure of Teranga FM, the only private radio station which used to carry divergent views, a few days before the executions were carried out. There is indeed a high possibility that the decision to close down the station was meant to prevent opponents of the execution from using it to voice out their opposition to it. While there may not be any obvious direct connection between the two events, but it is still a highly plausible scenario.
Source: Daily News
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