After 22 years of cruel dictatorship, no wonder the Gambians are celebrating the departure of Yahya Jammeh.
These notorious witch-hunts, which were
in full force in March, 2009, were perpetrated by President Yahya Jammeh to oppress the people and to exact revenge on perceived enemies..
Innocent, mostly elderly people were rounded up from their villages by
witch-hunters from Guinea and subjected to horrific treatment. Old people from
the village of Sinto were abducted at 5 am by men armed with guns and spades.
They were taken to secret government detention camps and made to drink
hallucinogenic drugs, then beaten into confessing. At least two died and
consequently many people fled in fear into the comparative safety of neighbouring
Senegal.
During this terrible time, Gambians
living in Banjul in order to make a living from the tourist trade were
desperately worried about their families back in their villages.
It was said
that Jammeh’s favourite aunt had become ill and died, and he believed that she
had been the target of witchcraft, and so he exacted this terrible revenge.
Jammeh was originally a soldier who took power in 1994 in a coup against the
former government on the grounds that the soldiers had not been paid. Few people
are brave enough to speak against him, and a prominent journalist and editor of
the opposition newspaper, The Point,
has disappeared and never been accounted for.
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