April 10 - 11 victims remembered

Abdoukarim Jammeh was shot in the left leg

The promise we made about presenting a photo editorial to commemorate the April 10 -11 2000 killing of at least 14 school children and the maiming of countless more kids could not be fulfilled due to poor response.

However, we are presenting here a short note of remembrance of our fallen heroes who faced death in defense of their basic fundamental right to petition their government.
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April 10 - 11 are days that will live in infamy when the lives of 14 unarmed school children were snuffed out, and numerous others of their colleagues maimed for life.

It is as certain as the eastern sun that these kids would have been alive if there was no Yaya Jammeh, Isatou Njie-Saidy, Ousman Badgie and Baboucar Jatta.  These people are responsible for the ensuing death and mayhem when AK-47 wielding security agents of the state disguising as soldiers charged into a crowd of petrified school children whose crime was to petition their government.  Their grievances were purely and simply to ask their government to investigate the killing of one, and the alleged raping of another, of their colleagues.

Isatou Njie-Saidy standing in for Jammeh who was on a visit to Cuba was in charge on those fateful days, immediately and without the benefit of an iota of evidentiary proof, claimed that the security forces were responding to fire with fire, when she claimed, the first shots came from a bunch of 13-year olds or younger.  In short, this woman blamed the kids for their own deaths and maiming.  Obviously, that was a lie - a lie she will have to live with for the remainder of her life.

As for Yaya Jammeh, Ousman Badgie and Baboucar Jatta,  they will have to answer, someday, to these and other crimes.  Laws will be passed to de-indemnify all members of the security forces implicated in these heinous acts against defenseless children.  

The kids were crying "we want justice, we want peace."  The Jammeh regime has refused to grant them neither justice nor peace.  A successor government will, and that's a promise.  May their souls continue to rest in peace and those maimed and neglected by a corrupt and incompetent government, we hope a successor government will try to redress the situation where the APRC regimes has failed you.