Yusupha Lowe, the 16 year old son of Bai Lowe, a man accused of being involved in the 30 December 2014 attempted coup in Gambia, was arrested on 1 January. Initial reports indicated that he was being held at the National Intelligence Agency headquarters, but credible sources now indicate that he is no longer being held there. Yusupha Lowe, the 16 year old son of Bai Lowe (who is alleged to have been involved in the attempted coup of 30 December 2014 in Gambia) was arrested together with his 19-year-old uncle, Pa Alieu Lowe and his father’s exwife, Jariatou Lowe, on 1 January. They were taken from Bai Lowe’s residence at around 1:00pm by men in plain clothes claiming to be following presidential orders.
A few weeks later, Jariatou Lowe was released without charge. However, Yusupha Lowe and Pa Alieu Lowe remain in incommunicado detention, without being charged and having no access to lawyers or family members. Initial reports had indicated that Yusupha Lowe was being held at the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) headquarters in Banjul, Gambia, but credible sources now indicate that he is no longer being held there. His current whereabouts remain unknown and his family is concerned about his safety. Relatives of people suspected to have been involved in the 30 December 2014 coup attempt have been subjected to reprisals by Gambian security forces. It is unclear how many people remain in incommunicado detention.
Amnesty International is concerned about the unlawful detention without charge of Yusupha Lowe and other relatives of the December 2014 coup suspects, well beyond the 72 hour time limit provided in Gambia’s constitution and other human rights laws and treaties. The Gambian government has refused to acknowledge the detention of Yusupha Lowe and many others and has not provided information on their whereabouts, effectively holding them outside of the protection of the law. This amounts to enforced disappearance, a crime under international law. As their whereabouts remain unknown, they are at a high risk of torture and other abuses. Please write immediately in English or your own language: n Urging the authorities to immediately reveal the whereabouts of Yusupha Lowe and all other detainees; nCalling on the authorities to promptly charge Yusupha Lowe and all other detainees with an internationally recognizable criminal offense should there be sufficient evidence or else immediately release them; n Calling on the authorities to immediately provide all the people detained in relation to the December 2014 coup attempt access to their families and lawyers; n Urging authorities to ensure that all detainees are not subjected to torture or ill-treatment while in detention.
PLEASE SEND APPEALS BEFORE 7 JULY 2015 TO: Minister of Justice and Attorney General Mama Fatima Singhateh Ministry of Justice and Attorney General Chambers Marina Parade Banjul, Gambia Email: [email protected]Salutation: Dear Minister Minister of Foreign Affairs Neneh Macdouall Gaye Ministry of Foreign Affairs 4, Marina Parade Banjul, Gambia Fax: 011 220 422 7917 Email: [email protected] Salutation: Dear Minister Also send copies to diplomatic representatives accredited to your country. Please insert local diplomatic addresses below: Name Address 1 Address 2 Address 3 Fax Fax number Email Email address Salutation Salutation Please check with your section office if sending appeals after the above date.
URGENT ACTION COUP SUSPECT’S TEENAGE SON HELD INCOMMUNICADO ADDITIONAL INFORMATION Gunmen attacked the presidential palace in the Gambian capital Banjul on 30 December 2014. At least four assailants, among them Colonel Lamin Sanneh and Alhaji Jaja Nass, were reportedly killed while one other assailant was detained by security forces. The Gambian authorities have not returned the bodies of those killed to their families. Aside from Yusupha Lowe, several other family members of coup suspects are also being held incommunicado.
Meta Njie, the mother of Colonel Lamin Sanneh who was killed during the attempted coup, was arrested and detained on 1 January. Meta Njie was visiting her sick elderly mother in the municipality of Fajikunda when four men who identified themselves as members of the NIA came into the house and took her away. Since then, no official news about her whereabouts has been provided. Informal sources indicate that she could also be detained at the NIA headquarters in Banjul. There is concern about her health. Mariam Njie, a woman in the her late sixties and who is the mother of Alhaji Jaja Nass, killed during the attempted coup, was detained on 5 January in the municipality of Kotu together with her daughter, her son and her brother. All of them were taken to the NIA headquarters where they were threaten with death and that their heads would be chopped off.
The daughter and the son were released on the same day; the brother a few weeks later, but the whereabouts of Mariam Njie are unknown. Essa Bojang, a man in his 60s with a physical disability and the father of the suspected coup plotter Dawda Bojang, was also arrested and detained on 1 January. The arrest and prolonged detention of family members of the alleged coup plotters, who have had no opportunity to challenge their detention, violates the basic legal protections provided for by the country’s constitution, as well as regional and international human rights law.
The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture released a report in March 2015, following his 2014 visit to the country, highlighting the high risk of torture, arbitrary arrest and enforced disappearances. This statement of the Special Rapporteur increases Amnesty International’s concern for those people who are in detention in Gambia, especially in relation to the 30 December 2014 failed coup. Name: Yusupha Lowe Gender m/f: m UA: 113/15 Index: AFR 27/1710/2015 Issue Date: 26 May 2015
West Africa: lack of objective rationality and moral fortitude collapse ECOWAS’s proposed term-limits
In a somewhat canted way, the Economic Community of West African States, almost always acts like an organization ruled by an oligarchy. In a way, it is. For, ECOWAS is under the thumbs of a cabal of sixteen heads of the states that constitute the institution. It is clear from decades of anecdotal evidence that Africa’s notoriously weak institutions lack a grasp of both the issues and commitment to confront the challenges that have paralyzed the continent for the better part of five decades. At the national levels, most Africans manifest an unflattering lack of nationalist fervor and a sense of altruism to serve the public good; defined, instead, by narrow, individual self-interests and family and tribal loyalties. To understand why African institutions continue to fail, a throw-back to the social dynamics of the colonial and precolonial eras is necessary.
The shocking lack of meaningful interactions between the colonizers and the colonized, accepted as an issue of social and economic hierarchy, has, in a devastatingly significant way shaped the way African leaders relate to their citizens. The social and economic classification under colonialism altered the way in which African political leaders interact with citizens; often portraying an unsettling aloofness and presumably occupying higher social profiles. Additionally, in pre-colonial West Africa, Islam, which was forced on societies, became a very powerful instrument of political subjugation and control. A submissive relationship with political authority soon developed between the governed and the governing, and continues to perpetuate a permanent underclass that is neutralized by religion from speaking truth to power. This divine moralization of politics created a malleable population whose mix of God and politics spawned the arrogant relationship with authority; relationship that has often turned toxic; even violent. The emulation of colonial social and economic stratification has created a deep and enduring fault-line between governments and the voiceless underclass, and is at the center of ECOWAS’s painful failure to pass its sensible term limit proposal.
ECOWAS’s capitulation and monumental failure, last week, affirms the level to which its leaders disregard the interest of its citizens; but it also corroborates the denunciation of African institutions as clueless and obsessed with power. When ECOWAS proposed the institution of term-limits, two weeks ago, most of its citizens were ecstatic, yet for some, last week’s term-limits failure was not completely unexpected. The familiar lack of objective rationality doomed the term-limit proposal from the very beginning, and punctuated Africa’s perennially negative political narrative with heavier doses of pessimism. African countries that lack the means to effect peaceful political transition suddenly became infused with numbing hopelessness. ECOWAS’s failure to unentangle itself from the greed and narcissism of some of its heads of states, is an indictment of the characters of leaders who failed to bend to the will of its citizens. In a rather mind-boggling way, ECOWAS lost an opportunity to preempt the possible consequences of civil strife in some of West Africa’s last bastions of tyranny and political underhandedness. The inherent failures of democracy lie in the conduct of electoral processes, and not adding muscle to the term-limit debate, left ECOWAS maligned by its citizens and hemorrhaging the goodwill of those who still have hope in the organization’s capacity to dramatically change from its leaders-based to citizens-based political triangulation. ECOWAS’s term-limit proposal must have originated from the organization’s perception of necessity, and to so cavalierly plunge this unique opportunity into uncertainty, only negates the organization’s argument for good governance, while continuing to leave many peoples’ lives in jeopardy. The seeming inability of ECOWAS to speak to its citizens’ needs, and the perpetuation of Africa’s deadly regimes, is cemented in the organization’s commitment, not to its citizens, but to heads of states many of who have demonstrated deadly human rights records and utter incompetence. But the failure to promulgate the term-limits proposal also raises a fundamental question. Whose interest does ECOWAS really serve; its people or its imperial rulers?
Clearly, the dramatic announcement of a proposed term-limit, two weeks ago, and its undramatic collapse, last week, put in proper perspective the corrosive divide between ECOWAS and citizens of the region. The current juxtaposition of political greed and citizens’ resignation, is grounds for forcing political change and altering the dynamics between the ruthless regimes and citizens coerced into intractable subservience. The idea of ECOWAS is frame-worked to reflect the philosophies of some leaders who lack the political mandates to speak for their citizens, as opposed to the majority of citizens who lack voice or the ability to change their political circumstances. The branding of ECOWAS as an unmitigated failure has stuck, but with a global political paradigm shift skewed towards democracy, an opportunity is open for ECOWAS to change its political trajectory; regardless of what some leaders want. The independence of ECOWAS should be sacrosanct, and completely impenetrable by forces still languishing in the worn-out, imperial mind-set that have reduced citizens into poverty and objects of exploitation. Last week ECOWAS failed to relieve the region of the agonizing excesses of the region’s imperial political systems,but there was, nonetheless, the marks of a new beginning, which, sooner rather than later, will undermine the power of the region’s political dinosaurs by empowering its citizens. And nowhere are the term-limits proposal more relevant than in Gambia, which unsurprisingly was one of only two countries that opposed it, but Gambia is also the country with the worst human rights record among ECOWAS member states. But as Yahya Jammeh readies for his fifth term {25 years} in office, Gambians debate vigorously as to whether to bar him from contesting elections in 2016; elections he is unlikely to lose regardless of who monitors the electoral process. One of the hallmarks of Gambia’s inability of remove Yahya Jammeh, is the prodigious failure of its self-absorbed political parties to unite and create a common agenda with civil society. Next year, with or without ECOWAS’s lack of objective rationality and moral fortitude, Gambians may decide to end Yahya Jammeh’s two decades rule of murder and mayhem.. Every long night has a day and Yahya Jammeh’s days may just be numbered.