Weep not my friend

By PK Jarju, Worcestershire, UK

A couple of weeks ago, I read Femi Peters Junior’s letter in the Freedom Newspaper in reaction to the jailing of his dad in the Gambia, which was very touching indeed. And as a parent and a personal friend of the Peters, I would like to join the family in condemning the one year imprisonment of Mr Peters Senior.

The jailing of Mr Peters Senior is unacceptable. It is an insult to our democracy and another attempt by the Jammeh regime to keep Gambians in a passive state of subjugation. Mr Peters Senior was jailed not because he murdered someone, or threatened the peace and tranquillity, but for merely exercising his constitutionally guaranteed rights as a son of the Gambia.

Section 25 (d) of the 1997 Constitution of the Gambia, which is an entrenched clause gives Gambians the right to assemble and demonstrate peaceably and without arms. It also gives Gambians in Section 25 (e) the right to associate freely, which shall include freedom to form and join associations and unions, including political parties and trade unions.

In jailing Mr Peters Senior for exercising his constitutionally guaranteed rights, the Gambian judiciary has again failed to protect Gambians from the tyranny of Jammeh. In other words, the courts are saying that Jammeh’s interest comes supreme to whatever rights are given in our constitution.

Jailing a Sixty something year-old man and denying him access to his family for no just reason is pure criminal and unacceptable in any civilised country much more ours whose actions are supposed to be guided by justice.

The Gambia government should be wise enough to know that they may have succeeded in using their powers to lock a frail elderly man to jail, but they will never be able to kill his political spirits, his passion and desire to see the complete restoration of democracy and the rule of law in our Gambia.

The Jammeh regime should also be wise enough to realise that the longer they keep Mr Peters incarcerated at the Mile Two Prisons, the more they are making him a hero to his supporters and the entire civilised world.

To my friend Olufemi and the entire Peters family, I share your pain of separation from your elderly dad, but please do not weep for him. As a veteran politician who is fighting for the restoration of democracy in a tyrannical state, Mr Peters Senior have always prepared for the worst. He believes in the Nelson Mandela’s philosophy that there is no easy walk to freedom anywhere and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadows of death again and again before we reach the mountain tops of our desire.

To conclude, I would like to call on the regime of Yahya Jammeh to bury its pride and do the sensible thing. Release Mr Peters Senior. Keeping Mr Peters in Mile Two Prisons will not in any way stop Gambians from clamouring for the complete restoration of democracy and good governance
in our country.

Further, I would also like to draw President Jammeh’s attention to a speech delivered by Nelson Mandela in December 1951 at the ANC Youth League in which he states: the struggle to sweep the African people to power in the land of their birth will be a bitter one. Leaders will be deported and imprisoned. The government will terrorise the people and their leaders in an effort to halt the forward march; ordinary forms of organisation will be rendered impossible, but the spirit of the people cannot be crushed, and no matter what happens to the present leadership, new leaders will arise like mushrooms until full victory is won.