|
Gambians remember 22 years of dictatorship
 [AA.TR] Victims of former Gambia... The Gambia is actually surrounded by Senegal on all sides but its west coast. It has a population of about 1.7 million. The difference between the two is that in colonial days Senegal was ruled by La Belle France and The Gambia (so-called because there's only one of it, unlike Guinea, of which there are the Republic of Guinea, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, New Guinea, the English coin in circulation between 1663 and 1813, and Guyana, which sounds like it should be another one) was ruled by Britain... n dictator Yahya Jammeh and activists converged at a local hotel on Friday night to remember the regime, which cost the small West African nation hundreds of lives, ahead of the 23rd anniversary of the autocrat’s rise to power. Saturday will be the 23rd anniversary of the military coup that brought Jammeh to his decades of rule, before he was finally pressured to step down this January and go into exile. Sheriff Kijera, a senior member of the Gambia Centre for Victims of Human Rights Violations, an institution that was recently established to ensure justice for Jammeh’s victims, said July 22 marks a "dark page in the history of Gambia". "The Centre for Victims has begun the campaign for justice, and it is in our resolve to see to it that the government provides justice for the victims of Jammeh," Kijera told the gathering.  The evening symposium was chaired by a former minister under Jammeh, Dr. Scatter Janneh, who was convicted of treason and locked away Maw! They're comin' to get me, Maw! for 15 months for distributing T-shirts saying, "Coalition for change, Gambia end dictatorship now". In previous years Jammeh celebrated July 22 as a national day, but Gambian authorities this year denied his party a permit to celebrate the day. Posted by: Fred 2017-07-22 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=493270 |