generalspeaking

His Excellency Sheik Professor Doctor President

"Today, after fighting for our freedom and liberating our continent, we are being prescribed a religion -- democracy, human rights and good governance -- by descendants of the same colonial powers."
[African nations would no longer be "hoodwinked" into taking lectures from the same Western nations that colonized and "plundered" Africa.]
Gambian President Yahya Jammeh

"When African dictators are cornered or see change about to happen, they raise this pan-Africanist flag and say there is a conspiracy of the West against them, a black versus white issue.
"He wants attention for himself and sympathy from other African leaders, so he thinks, 'Let me do something crazy and wild like this. Let us look like we are in a David and Goliath struggle'."
Banka Manneh, New York protester

"The executions of last year brought an unprecedented amount of international attention on Gambia, and this may be a way to snub the international community for its criticisms."
Lisa Sherman-Nikolaus, Amnesty International West Africa researcher

Gambia's president was outraged that the prestigious hotel in which he stayed while visiting New York for the opening of the United Nations General Assembly ceremonies had been picketed by protesters against his rule. Like Robert Mugabe, Yahya Jammeh is a ruthless tyrant, an idiosyncratic megalomaniac whose rule has done nothing good for his country since he seized power two decades ago.

He addressed the United Nations with an angry anti-Western speech unleashing his fury against the colonialist past that he claims looted his country of its treasures. He doubtless had an avid audience in the Non-Aligned Group who support the ongoing demands of varied African countries demanding reparation is due them from their past colonialist occupiers. To support their claims that their development was restrained by having been occupied, humiliated and enslaved.

Mr. Jammeh takes umbrage at Western criticism of his widespread human rights abuses. In Gambia he has orchestrated a campaign against "witches". He also insists that he has discovered an AIDS cure. His own political opposition has no use for their president's anti-colonialist diatribes. Nor, it is safe to say, his summary removal of his country from the Commonwealth of Nations.

Gambia, he announced on Tuesday night, would no longer remain "a member of any neo-colonial institution". His Excellency Sheik Professor Doctor President last year marked Ramadan's conclusion which traditionally is marked with gestures of kindness and clemency, by announcing capital sentences to be carried out on 38 prisoners.

Eight men and one woman were executed by firing squad on that occasion. Within Gambia, those who campaign for reform have legitimate fears that remaining constraints on their president for the commission of human rights abuses would be effectively removed with the country's departure from the Commonwealth.

Labels: Africa, Colonialism, Commonwealth, Controversy, Human Relations, Human Rights, United Nations

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, October 05, 2013