A US-based Gambian Momodou Ndow has asked President Adama Barrow to grow a pair and terminate serving members of the Gambian army who are implicated in acts of torture and murder.

“The Army is directly under Barrow’s control as Commander In Chief and he doesn’t have to wait for the commission’s recommendations to fire anyone. If I am your boss and you get implicated in torture or murder, I will fire you right away,” Ndow said in a Facebook post on Thursday.

A section of the Gambian public has been calling for the dismissal of all serving military personnel whose name have been mentioned at the TRRC, to have been culpable of acts of torture and other human rights abuses during former president Yahya Jammeh’s 22 years rule.

According to Ndow, the commission’s recommendations are more about who will be prosecuted.

“Barrow can fire these people based on the fact that they are implicated in serious crimes. If not, he might even create a hostile work environment for them! I would definitely not want to work with someone who’s implicated in heinous crimes of human rights violations. They should be fired if Barrow wants a healthy work environment in the army.

“Who wants to be seen with alleged executioners? Heck, am even kicking myself for knowing Alhagie Martin and the Singhateh brothers back in the day. Had I known they would turn out to be monsters, nekon dumalen buga hamm sah! Rotten lot! Smh,” he said.

By IOM

The voluntary return of Gambians to their homes is averaging about 143 men and women per month since the start of 2017, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported this week, or the equivalent of one medium-sized charter flight every four weeks.

As of 8 February 2019, 3,668 Gambians have been assisted to voluntarily return home under the EU-IOM Joint Initiative for Migrant Protection and Reintegration since the start of 2017. Over 70 per cent of these individuals were returned just from Libya, with another 25 per cent coming home from Niger. The remaining 5 per cent came home from Mali, Morocco, Mauritania and Tunisia.

Almost two-thirds of all returnees have already received their reintegration assistance. Jalika is one of the 2,097 Gambian returnees who received reintegration assistance from IOM in The Gambia after she returned from a perilous journey across the desert. Upon voluntarily returning from Niger in March 2018 with her 10-year-old daughter, she received grocery goods which allowed her to open her own shop.

“I am happy to be back home safe and sound,” she said. “After some ups and downs, IOM helped me stabilize my income. I want to expand the shop with more goods and get my son to work in the shop.”

Within six months after the return of many Gambian migrants, counseling sessions with the returnees aim to tailor reintegration assistance to their specific needs, interests and skills based on the available opportunities in the country. Returnees classified as vulnerable cases, such as Jalika, are provided expedited assistance within two to four weeks. Close to 90 per cent of assisted Gambian returnees opt to establish their own microbusiness mainly in retail (39 per cent), construction (31 per cent) and transport (13 per cent).

IOM in The Gambia supports the reintegration of returnees through a holistic approach, addressing both migrants’ and their communities’ economic, social and psychosocial needs. Reintegration assistance may come in the form of medical and psychosocial support, support to set up or strengthen a small business, support to pursue education or vocational training, support for job insertion or referrals to other services available in the country.

This assistance forms part of the EU-IOM Joint Initiative for Migrant Protection and Reintegration. Launched in November 2017 with the funding of the European Union Emergency Trust Fund for Africa, the initial target for The Gambia was to facilitate the voluntary returns and reintegration of 1,500 individuals over a period of three years. Less than two years after the launch, that target has been significantly exceeded.

Voluntary return options are an important protection measure for vulnerable and stranded migrants who are facing exploitation or abuse along the migration routes and who wish to return to their countries of origin but do not have the necessary means to do so. Returns are done at the explicit request of the individual returning, who has the right to pull out at any time of the process.

While IOM is not involved in or does not provide any financial contribution to forced returns, migrants who are forcibly returned may nevertheless find themselves in vulnerable situations and in need of assistance and protection as much as any voluntary returnee. Under certain conditions and safeguards, IOM can provide post-arrival and reintegration assistance to vulnerable migrants who were forcibly returned.

“The EU-IOM Joint Initiative for Migrant Protection and Reintegration in The Gambia serves a threefold purpose: saving lives by assisting those en route, offering voluntary return assistance to those who want it, and providing reintegration support to returning Gambian migrants and their communities,” said Ambassador Attila Lajos, Head of the EU Delegation to The Gambia.

“Essentially, the Joint Initiative is about making sure that the migration process is safer and better managed, and that migrant rights and dignity are respected,” he added. “Personally, I am very proud of the interim results achieved so far by these joint efforts by the EU, IOM and the Gambian government. Saving 3,668 Gambian lives and already assisting almost two-thirds of them to find their way to make it in The Gambia is a great achievement which the country can be proud of.”

IOM also offers returnees the option to venture into collective or community-based projects. The Gambia Returnees from the Backway Association, an organization formed by returnees while in detention in Libya, embarked this year on a collective poultry project for 12 members and was supported by IOM through a two-day training on agribusiness, financial management, conflict management and leadership.

“Facilitating the voluntary returns of over double the initial target is a huge milestone for IOM in The Gambia. Moving forward, we are hoping to diversify the types of industries returnees engage in for their reintegration, enhance referrals to existing vocational training programmes, and further link economic reintegration to psychosocial support,” said Fumiko Nagano, IOM Chief of Mission in The Gambia.

The EU-IOM Joint Initiative for Migrant Protection and Reintegration is funded by the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa and implemented in close collaboration with 26 African countries. The Joint Initiative facilitates orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration management through the development of rights-based and development-focused policies and processes on protection and sustainable reintegration.

For more information, please contact Miko Alazas at IOM The Gambia; Tel: +220 330 3168, Email: [email protected] or visit www.migrationjointinitiative.org.

By Lamin Njie

The Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission on Thursday played a video of former president Yahya Jammeh regarding the November 11, 1994 incident.

The recording which appeared to have been made shortly after the incident showed the former president speaking about how he supervised a large-scale military action which led to the killing of at least 20 people.

Below is full transcript of what the former leader said in the video.

“The rest of the civilian cabinet members who have been there since 94 will tell you. That I suspended cabinet and asked them to go and talk to these soldiers. They were there from 8 O’Clock on Thursday up to 7 O’Clock [Friday]. And I ask them to leave the camp. If they got the message that’s it. If they have not got the message let them go ahead we know what to do.

“And then they gave me the assurance that oh okay, ‘you know it was a misunderstanding, we thought that it was true that soldiers at State House guard are paid 10,000 dalasis a month.’ I said but how is that possible. Everybody is paid from army headquarters, so you know the pay scale of everybody. They said no no they were told and they will not reveal their source. That even though they received money, their normal salary this 10,000 dalasis is paid through a secret account.

“But we know that some of those officers were very close to members of the former regime. In fact some of them went into the army through the back door through those people that they know. So we warned them. They came around 7 and we thought that that was the end of it, they’ve got the message. By 1 0’Clock, they’ve already lined up people they thought were loyalist to us, and they were going to shoot them. But the mistake they made was they were brutalising them, that is punishing them, asking them to crawl and they had guns pointed at them. And they said they will drill them for one hour as a lesson to others who may want to betray once they start moving on us.

“So they were subject to all sorts of maltreatment to a point where they decided to kill them. Well it happened that they line them up… I don’t know whether you have ever been to Yundum Barracks. They have lined them up on a tarred road, the road that runs right through the camp. But then if a vehicle is passing on the highway you can see people. So what they did was they cannot just line them up like that and shoot them without anybody seeing them. And they didn’t also want to alert us by stopping traffic. So they decided to put the lights out. The moment they put the lights out in order to shoot these people, these people ran away. And one escaped, he ran on foot from Yundum up to Fajara where he informed Sabally. Sabally was shocked when he saw his body. He said that he was beaten. He had a lot of lacerations on his back.

“And then Sabally called me I told him, ‘look, don’t worry.’ I called the camp and somebody picked up and then he told me, ‘yes, the so-called chairman we are going to kick your…’ Then I laughed and I told him, ‘we are going to teach you a lesson.’ I said, ‘okay this thing is for real.’ Then we sent scouts to go and check and they realised that these people were already, in fact they were hunting for these people and in fact they were mobilising. We just sent a few people to attack Yundum little did we know that the whole problem was at Bakau. That they have amassed all their weapons in Bakau. So we thought that it was only Yundum only to realise that Bakau is the headquarters of these so-called rebels.

“So it all came to a point when I called Bakau to find out what was going on but incidentally, the signaller didn’t know what was going on. They locked him inside. So he thought that everything was okay. I told him to go out and check what was going on around the guard room. Then all of a sudden he said, ‘sir, I have been locked in.’ I said, ‘good, just stay there.’ It wasn’t a question of… these people were paid.

“When the fight started by 1 O’Clock, by 1:45, I don’t want to name names here but a former Western ambassador called Fafa Mbai and told him, ‘well, it seems that the AFPRC are gaining the upper hand.’ That the rebels are losing. He (Fafa) said, ‘how do you know? He (ambassador) said, ‘from sources’. He said, ‘you are an ambassador, you are supposed to be in your house.’ Then I just called to tell you that unfortunately the AFPRC is gaining the upper hand in the fight. Fafa Mbai called me. I told him I know what is going on. I said, ‘you remember what he said when he last came to the office?’ He said, ‘oh I didn’t think that they would be stupid enough to go that far.’ I said, ‘yes but I will teach them a lesson, after that we know what we are going to do to them.’

“So by 4 [am], the fight was over. These people were running around and we were chasing them everywhere. And behind that particular country’s embassy, we found eight uniforms and also blood stains. And by eight O’Clock we got news that some of the mutineers who escaped from the camp and were seriously injured were in Senegalese military hospitals in Casamance. And we wondered how they got to know about it. And all of a sudden, we were told that Bakary Darbo escaped and he’s in Kolda, the home of the former Senegalese High Commissioner.

“So I told him [Sana Sabally], ‘look, how did Bakary Darbo escape, how did he get to Kolda and can you explain how your vehicle had to pass Kanlaji checkpoint by 5 am?’ He said,’ well, he didn’t know.’ Because I gave instructions that no matter what happened, they should not touch diplomatic vehicles. Let them allow them to pass. What we thought was that they will try to do the normal thing, try to evacuate their citizens. Because that’s what they do. They create trouble and the first thing they do is to evacuate their citizens. So I told them, ‘look, don’t touch any diplomatic vehicle and that was the mistake. We would have got Bakary Darbo, the main sponsor of the attempted coup.”

Survivors of clerical paedophilia related their traumatic experiences to the world’s top bishops on Thursday at a landmark summit at the Vatican on the protection of minors.

Here are some extracts from their video testimonies, the transcripts of which were provided by the Vatican, without identifying the speakers.

– Victim from South America –

“The first thing they did was to treat me as a liar, turn their backs and tell me that I, and others, were enemies of the Church.

“You are the physicians of the soul and yet, with rare exceptions, you have been transformed — in some cases — into murderers of the soul, into murderers of the faith.

“The only thing I ask of you — and I ask the Holy Spirit — to help restore that trust in the Church, so that those who do not want to listen to the Holy Spirit and who want to continue to cover-up, leave the Church to give way to those who want to create a new Church, a renewed Church and a Church absolutely free from sexual abuse.”

– Victim from Africa –

“From the age of 15, I had sexual relations with a priest. This lasted for 13 years. I got pregnant three times and he made me have an abortion three times, quite simply because he did not want to use condoms or contraceptives.

“At first I trusted him so much that I did not know he could abuse me. I was afraid of him, and every time I refused to have sex with him, he would beat me.

“And since I was completely dependent on him economically, I suffered all the humiliations he inflicted on me.”

– Victim from Eastern Europe –

“An encounter with a priest hurt me. As a teenager, after my conversion, I went to the priest so he could teach me how to read the Scriptures during Mass; and he touched my private parts. I spent a night in his bed. This hurt me deeply.

“The other thing that hurt me was the bishop to whom, after many years, as an adult, I talked about the incident… I met the bishop and he attacked me without trying to understand me, and this hurt me.”

– Victim from the United States –

“I still carry pain. My parents still carry pain at the dysfunction, the betrayal, the manipulation that this bad man — who was our Catholic priest at the time — wrought upon my family and myself.

“I would ask the bishops for leadership. Leadership and vision and courage.”

– Victim from Asia –

“I have been sexually molested for a long time, over a hundred times, and this sexual molestation has created traumas and flashbacks all across my life. It’s difficult to live life, it’s difficult to be with people, to get connected with people.

“They have all practically covered (up) every issue, covered (up for) the perpetrators and that kills me.

“I’ll request the Bishops get their act clear because this is one of the time bombs happening in the church of Asia.”

By Lamin Njie

United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said that his country remains committed to a strong partnership with The Gambia.

The foremost US diplomat stated this while congratulating Gambians on the occasion of the 54th independence anniversary of The Gambia, which was marked on Monday.

“We remain committed to a strong partnership with The Gambia and look forward to continued cooperation on efforts to promote democracy, good governance, and economic growth.

“The United States celebrates with The Gambia as you honor this historic day,” Mr Pompeo said.

More than half of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa have anti-homosexuality laws, although others have moved towards legal tolerance, watchdogs say.

Twenty-eight out of 49 countries have laws penalising same-sex relationships, according to Neela Ghoshal, a Human Rights Watch (HRW) specialist in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights.

The death penalty is on the books, under sharia, in Mauritania, Sudan and northern Nigeria, although there have been no known executions in recent times.

In southern Somalia, gay men are believed to have been put to death in territory ruled by the Al Shabaab jihadist group.

However, Angola, Mozambique and Seychelles have scrapped anti-gay laws in recent years, and on Friday a High Court ruling in Nairobi will determine whether Kenya follows suit.

On the other hand, Chad and Uganda have introduced or toughened legislation. Rights groups say many anti-gay laws date from the colonial area.

They represent a peril even in countries where they are not implemented, according to campaigners, as their existence on the statute books entrenches stigma and encourages harassment, they say.

Pope Francis gathers bishops from around the world at the Vatican this week for a hotly-awaited summit on tackling the wave of child sex abuse scandals assailing the Catholic Church.

The heads of around 100 bishops’ conferences from every continent will convene from Thursday to Sunday for the meeting on the protection of minors, with victims’ groups demanding that a concrete action plan on fighting paedophilia be drawn up.

The pope, who asked the bishops to speak to victims of abuse in their respective countries before the Rome convention, has tried to dial down “inflated expectations” for a cure-all.
Several victims were also invited to the Vatican.

“I ask you to pray for this meeting,” the pope said Sunday, adding that he wanted the meeting “as an act of strong pastoral responsibility in the face of an urgent challenge of our time.”

The conference aims to be an opportunity to improve awareness of the global phenomenon of sexual abuse of minors within the Church, despite many in Africa, Asia and the Middle East being in denial of what they call “a Western problem”.

In many parts of the world, discussing violence towards children and even sex is taboo, leading the Vatican to organise this week’s “educational” gathering.

Some abuse victims, particularly from countries where their plight is ignored, have also been invited to attend.

“Someone who has met a victim, heard their cries for help, their tears, their psychological and physical wounds, can’t remain the same,” said German Jesuit priest Hans Zollner, a psychologist who travels the world educating priests and is one of the conference’s organisers.

“The Catholic Church has been faced with this problem for the last 35 years,” he said, hailing rigorous preventative measures taken in Australia, Britain, Canada, Ireland and the United States.

“It works: the number of new accusations of sexual assault in all these countries is now minimal,” he said.

The aim is for the heads of the world’s episcopal conferences to achieve “a feeling of collective responsibility” said Father Federico Lombardi, who will be leading debates during the conference.

“The credibility of the Church is at stake,” he said.

The summit comes after Pope Francis defrocked a former cardinal — American Theodore McCarrick — over accusations he sexually abused a teenager 50 years ago.

McCarrick, 88, who resigned from the Vatican’s College of Cardinals in July, is the first cardinal ever to be defrocked for sex abuse.

Chilean Vatican expert Luis Badilla said the meeting would be a “decisive moment for the pontificate”.

“We want this meeting to result in concrete measures,” he said, echoing victims’ hopes for the conference, being held in the wake of paedophile scandals that have shaken the Church particularly in Chile and in the United States.

The summit’s title, concerning “the protection of minors”, avoids using the words “sex” or “paedophilia”, noted Badilla.

That reflects the Church’s centuries-old instinct to protect its image, he said. But added “the only way to emerge from the crisis is to tell the whole truth”.

In France, prosecutors said Friday they were investigating a sexual assault complaint made against the Vatican’s envoy to Paris, 74-year-old Luigi Ventura.

He is accused of molesting an official at the Paris mayor’s office, a judicial source told AFP.
The pope has already warned those hoping the four-day meet will be a panacea that “the problem of abuse will continue”.

“By resolving the problem within the Church, through becoming aware, we will contribute to resolving it within society, within families, where the shame means everything is hidden,” Francis said.

The meeting will come up with “protocols for moving forward”, because “sometimes bishops don’t know what to do,” he said.

Father Zollner is also wary of people hoping for a magic wand of “new norms” that will make the problem simply disappear. Bishops must “change their attitude”, which can be more difficult than drawing up new rules or guidelines, he said.

The scale of the problem is impossible to measure statistically. A study in the United States said that between three and four percent of the clergy were involved in abuse before 2002, when stricter guidelines were published, said Zollner.

While the Catholic Church says it is trying to address the problem, other churches are also affected.

In the United States, the Protestant Southern Baptist Convention has been hit by a wide-ranging sex abuse scandal involving almost 400 pastors, volunteers and teachers over two decades.

By Lamin Njie

Vice president Ousainou Darboe has said that he will be proud to lead The Gambia when he turns 73.

Darboe stated this in Bakoteh on Saturday while slapping back at his critics who continue to question his credentials to lead The Gambia.

“I am saying that I am not desperate to be president of The Gambia but I will be proud to lead The Gambia when I am aged 73. I will be proud to do that. Buhari is more than 73 years. There are a lot of them,” he said.

Darboe will be 73 years old in 2021 when The Gambia will hold general elections and according to the UDP leader “age gives birth to wisdom.”

“So if they say I am old, I agree… They sit and say he’s not contented. What is there to be not content about? They’re there saying he’s old. I agree. I thank God. They said we are ANC. Nelson Mandela at 72 walked out of prison and led South Africa,” he said.