The Gambia
Opposition strongly condemns police killing of protesting students

afrol.com, 12 April - Gambians have still not come to terms with what happened on Monday, 10th April 2000. This day will be written in the annals of The Gambia as the day sanity ran amok in this country, the opposition United Democratic Party (UDP) stated in a press release published today.

Meanwhile, Banjul, and surrounding towns remained calm on Tuesday, a day after students and city hoodlums fought pitched battles with police which resulted in several deaths, Police Public Relations Officer Abdoulie Sanyang told IRIN.

- Our exposure and condemnation of acts of brutality and unconstitutional behaviour, typical of law enforcement agents, has been a subject of regular sensitisation and discussion with The Gambian people and the international community, the UDP Secritariat goes on. It is therefore in line with this cardinal principle of justice and the rule of the law that the UDP, in the eyes of the whole world, strongly condemns the senseless murder of Gambian school children, who on Monday 10th April 2000 were on a peaceful demonstration as guaranteed by section 25 (d) of The Gambia constitution. The gruesome massacre of innocent school children can be compared in its savagery and brutality only to the events of Soweto, South Africa. An yet it is worse than Soweto, because at least the students in South Africa were fighting for freedom and recognition from white minority rule. The Gambia, an independent state has no reason to butcher its school children for simply expressing their opinion and manifesting their feelings. 

Gambians have demonstrated during colonial days in 1961 and have also made even violent demonstrations during the PPP administration, but never before has the ruling Government reacted by instructing the military to use live ammunition and thereby kill in cold blood our children. The repetition in the provinces to what happened to our children on the 10th April only demonstrates the well-calculated decision of the authorities to brutalise, kill and maim our unarmed and defenceless children. This can happen only under the present climate of brutality where killing, torture and wonton slaughter, which have become part of the culture of a Gambia besieged by bloodthirsty individuals, UDP says.

Gambian religious leaders have been "conspicuously silent" since the unfolding of the tragic events, starting with the brutalisation and subsequent death of Ebrima Barry and the rape of a schoolgirl by uniformed agents of the APRC Government. The UDP called for "their moral and spiritual guidance in our quest for peace and tranquillity" in their declaration. 

The UDP also called on the International Community and Human Rights Organisations to join it in strongly condemning the gruesome and cowardly murder of over a dozen unarmed and defenceless school children, for merely exercising their legitimate constitutional and civic rights, and Omar Barrow, a Red Cross volunteer - a journalist by profession - while performing his humanitarian duties. Barrow was a reporter for the privately owned Senegalese radio station Sud FM. He had taken time off to help the Red Cross. The police denied using live bullets and tear gas to disperse the demonstrators - which the Red Cross estimated at 5,000 - but said some people were probably trampled in stampedes or accidentally stoned to death.

"They are lying. They used live rounds," one news source told IRIN. "Police removed live rounds from their guns in the Kombo Police Station." Exact number for people killed and injured are not immediately available. News sources put the conservative estimate at between 10 and 12 dead and scores more injured. One source added, however, that bodies were lying outside the morgue of the Royal Victoria Hospital, which holds about 20 corpses.

The UDP says it is determined not to rest until all these children are freed and united with their families and the murderers, especially those who gave the order to shoot at the innocent children, are brought to justice. "We call on the Government to institute a full-scale judicial enquiry into these acts of brutality meted out to our children," the UDP Secretariat said.

Sources: UDP and IRIN

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