Jailed Gambians pay price for their perceived disloyalty

Banjul / AFP

As The Gambia sees a surge in support for the opposition ahead of presidential polls days away, a spate of arrests in the run-up has shown the cost of dissent.
President Yahya Jammeh seized power in a 1994 coup and has targeted opponents and several of his own ministers, while surviving multiple attempts to remove him from power.
In the months prior to the December 1 vote, a former minister, an ex-ruling party MP and two journalists with the state broadcaster are among those who have been detained, often without a clear reason.
Jainaba Bah said she still doesn’t know why her husband, former junior foreign affairs minister Mamadou Sajo Jallow, has been in custody since early September and denied access to a lawyer.
“My personal view is that he has been arrested because I have declared my support for the UDP (opposition party),” she told AFP by phone on Saturday from Sweden.
Her husband, a longtime ambassador to the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, was taken away by the security services on September 2 after his house was burgled and documents taken. But his family has been told he cannot be released until he produces a passport and collects signatures from various officials, tough conditions to meet while he is behind bars and his wife has fled to Sweden.
“I can’t sleep,” Bah said, describing the “whole range of things that might be possible from the stories I have heard about,” referring to alleged abuses committed in The Gambia’s notorious prisons.
Allegations of torture and rape, especially in Banjul’s Mile Two prison, are common.
Isatou Touray, a leading women’s rights campaigner and a member of the opposition coalition that is fielding a single candidate against Jammeh this election, says such arrests have become familiar. “This has been the norm in the Jammeh regime. You can never predict whether a minister is going to be there for three months or even three days,” she said at a rally in a village outside the capital.
“He is the alpha and omega of everything. He does the thinking, even though he does not have the capacity,” she added.

Opposition gaining confidence
Those who opt to leave the government are also at risk, especially deputies who have joined the Gambia Democratic Congress, a grouping of mostly former ruling party officials.
Tina Faal, formerly of the ruling Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction (APRC), was detained for three weeks in August despite already being on bail over a separate theft case. No reason was given for her re-arrest.
“They told us that they have documents they want to hand over to her. But they did not disclose their identities to us,” a family source said at the time of the men that descended on her home.
Meanwhile most of the top officials from the leading opposition United Democratic Party remain in jail, serving three-year sentences for holding protests in April.
They were arrested while calling for political reform on April 14 or at a subsequent demonstration over the death of UDP official Solo Sandeng in custody.
Touray, the women’s rights campaigner, believes this has galvanised huge street rallies observed across the country, unprecedented in a nation where political expression is discouraged.