“Our opinion, from the very beginning, was that neither the commission of inquiry nor the coroner’s inquest was necessary. Our position was that the facts of the bloody massacres of April 10 and 11, 2000 spoke clearly for themselves. Our position was that the setting up of the commission and coroner’s inquest was simply a ploy by the government to diffuse tension and buy time. Our position was that nothing would come out of it. Now, we have been proven right.”
These views were expressed in the pages of the Independent Newspaper in January 2001, in the immediate aftermath of the Jammeh regime’s rejection of the reports emanating from the coroner’s inquest and commission of inquiry into the April 10 and 11, 2000 Massacre. I could not agree more with these sentiments in 2001 and in 2018. In fact, I borrowed the title of this article from the aforementioned Independent Newspaper piece.
It took us almost 18 years to finally lay our hands on the full commission of inquiry report. In the end though, it only confirmed for us what we suspected all along. The commission deliberately decided that it was not interested in finding out the truth about who gave the orders to murder our children. Instead, the commission prioritized vandalism over coldblooded murder; it was more important to the commission to assess damages to Gamtel installations than to inquire into the pain and suffering of families that lost loved ones on those fateful days or hold accountable the perpetrators of this heinous act. You will not find in the commission report findings on parents being asked about their maimed or murdered children, their hopes and dreams for these children, or their plans to give livelong medical care to their children who suffered both physical and mental injuries.
But no matter how much the commission tried to bury the truth, the report still contains information that any serious government can use to successfully prosecute the perpetrators of the heinous acts of April 10 and 11, 2000 and adequately compensate these victims of the Jammeh regime. In other words, we do not need another commission of inquiry in 2018 to deal with the April 10 and 11, 2000 massacre, just like we did not need it in 2000.
The 2000 Commission used the same ‘Never Again’ mantra currently espoused by the Barrow government to justify the commission’s existence. It was a stated objective of the 2000 Commission to “make recommendation as to how a recurrence” of the events of April 10 and 11, 2000 can be avoided. Clearly, the Commission failed in achieving that goal. Not only did it fail to make recommendations aimed at preventing another massacre, it deliberately avoided getting to the truth of what actually happened. The Commission decided to sidestep the most important tool for deterring crime: Accountability.
Societies cannot prevent criminal behavior like the coldblooded murder of students by just setting up a commission of inquiry to learn about how the murder occurred and writing reports on the findings of the inquiry. That is a mockery to our system of justice that is designed to ensure that perpetrators of crimes are investigated, prosecuted, and punished for their crimes. This is the justice that victims of crimes deserve from their governments. Lest I be misunderstood, justice does not equal retribution per se. Dispensing justice on criminals entails upholding the law to hold criminals accountable for their crimes. In other words, it is unjust and counterproductive to wait until after a crime has been committed to then change the law to avoid holding criminals accountable. That encourages people to commit crimes: the exact opposite of what the ‘Never Again’ mantra is trying to achieve.
What the April 10 and 11, 2000 victims need from the Barrow administration is not another inquiry; but for the government to act on the findings of the 2000 Commission’s report, which was released by the April10/11 Memorial Foundation and TANGO on the 18th Anniversary of the massacre. As mentioned earlier, the Commission tried very hard to bury the truth and ended up making recommendations that had little or no correlation to what happened on April 10 and 11, 2000. But there is enough in the report that this government can use to show Gambians that it is serious about its ‘Never Again’ slogan.
For instance, if one studies the report, one cannot miss the fact that a dysfunctional security apparatus was responsible for the massacre. It was not caused by unruly kids, who were not properly brought up by their parents. But the 2000 Commission decided to place blame on grieving parents, rather than holding the real culprits accountable and ergo avoiding future massacres.
The breakdown of law and order on April 10 and 11, 2000 started from the top, i.e. from the president, his vice president, interior secretary, inspector general of police, down through the entire chain of command of the PIU to the trigger-happy security forces who shot the children. It was established at the Commission that the PIU was, and is still, ill-prepared to deal with citizens exercising their constitutional rights to take to the streets to manifest their grievances against government wrongdoing. Mind you, I wrote the above observations about the security situation in the country before the fateful events at Faraba, where the PIU again opened fire on unarmed Gambians exercising their constitutional rights and killing and injuring several. This just goes to show that there is a lot this government could and should have done to avoid another massacre of innocent Gambians. The authorities need to step up and accept responsibility up to the highest levels of this government.
The biggest blunder that was committed on April 10 and 11, 2000, was to arm the PIU with live ammunition and order them to “disperse the students forcibly.” According to the Interior Secretary, the order came from above him and he could not reverse the order. There is no doubt in Gambians’ minds who gave the order. That order is the direct cause of the massacre, because all the fatal injuries were caused by gunshot wounds.
Now, to ask Gambians to disregard these clear-cut facts and deny the victims justice (namely, citizens’ expectation that the government will uphold the law by prosecuting and punishing those responsible for the crime), requires a compelling case from the Barrow administration showing that punishing criminals will lead to more massacres or letting criminals go scot free will deter those criminals and others from committing future crimes. It will be a feat if the government can pull it off, because neither logic nor empirical evidence supports that notion. It is absurd and wishful thinking to cling to the notion that letting murderers go free will deter crime. The onus is on this government that wants to subvert our criminal justice system in favor of a nebulous commission of inquiry to convince Gambians that it is better for the society to let bygones be bygones.
The government did a good job of consulting Gambians as it made its preparations for the next commission of inquiry looking into the atrocities of the Jammeh regime. I still do not believe that one is needed for the April 10 and 11, 2000 atrocities. If we were dealing with a polarized society where, God forbid, neighbor was brutalizing neighbor on the basis of tribal, religious, or political affiliation, then one can understand subverting our criminal justice system in order to reconcile the society. April 10 and 11, 2000 was not that kind of a scenario. As shown by the poorly prepared 2000 Commission report, there are few Gambians responsible for the massacre. The victims came from a cross-section of Gambian society and were not targeted on the basis of tribe, religion, caste, or politics. They were gunned down simply because they dared to come out to protest on behalf of fellow students who were raped and murdered. It is heart-wrenching that to this day these victims have been denied the justice they deserve. One can understand the former government deciding to subvert our laws in order to absolve themselves of responsibility for this heinous crime. But it is mindboggling why the current government will want to follow the same route and open itself to criticism that it is putting political expediency above victims’ rights.
My sincere advice to this government vis-a-vis the upcoming Commission is for the government to stay true to what it promised Gambians, namely that the Commission will be victim centric. In order for the government to be taken seriously, there are certain actions it needs to take beyond just adopting lofty slogans. First, the government should set up a fund derived mainly from the money Jammeh and his cohorts looted from the Gambian people, primarily to compensate victims; and not to pay huge salaries to investigators and commissioners or rent expensive premises to hold hearings. Once the Commission is set up, priority should be given to the victims to come in and testify. If the Commission works effectively with the Victims Center, which has already registered more than 1000 victims of Jammeh’s atrocities, this initial phase of the Commission’s work would move swiftly. Again, priority should not be given to criminals to come in and continue lying to the Gambian people in order to salvage their images. The purpose of these hearings is to assess the amount of reparation to be awarded to the victims. This should require minimal investigation; and in the case of the April 10 and 11, 2000 victims, the facts speak for themselves, as stated by the Independent Newspaper in 2001. We know the people who were shot and we should be in a position to easily assess the compensation due to them. Let us find a mechanism to get them compensated without further delay.
Finally, the killers, including government officials who gave the orders to the PIU and created a conducive environment for the massacre to take place, need to be held accountable. Accountability and reconciliation are not mutually exclusive. Allowing impunity in our society will only lead us down the path to another April 10 and 11, 2000 style massacre as we just witnessed in Faraba.
Muhamad Sosseh, Esq.
Washington, DC
June 20, 2018
