Africa-Press – Gambia. The Victims Centre has been keen on the transparency and accountability of the sale of assets and properties of former President Yahya Jammeh since its inception in 2017, as there was wider expectation among victims that their reparations will be derived from the sale of the said assets and properties as the violations meted out to victims between July 22, 1994 and January 17, 2017 were perpetrated by agents of his government.
The Centre has also been keenly following the recent conversations following the publication of The Republic’s investigative report on the sale of the assets of the former president which has sparked conversations from various media platforms and organisations.
We stand in solidarity with the GALA organisation demanding transparency and accountability on the sale of the said assets by the current government as these assets were not just Jammeh’s assets but they belong to Gambians who deserve the right to know what happened to the assets as a nation.
We are therefore, very much concerned as to why the GALA youths were denied their right for peaceful assembly by the police authorities which led to unlawful arrests and illegal detention and alleged torture of protesters resulting to national protests across the nation by young people.
Furthermore, the VC welcomes the outcome of the protest leading to the release of the list of properties sold alongside the buyers and prices.
We therefore urge the government to uphold the laws on torture and take responsibility to investigate and bring to account all officers who are allegedly responsible for the torturing the GALA youth protesters and bring them before a competent court of law for proper accountability.
Finally, contrary to claims made by the APRC, that millions of dalasi had been disbursed to selected victims, the VC would like to make it categorically clear that it has never received a single butut from the government of the Gambia from its inception to date. All that was disbursed in the name of victims is 50 million dalasi which was directly disbursed to the TRRC. From this amount, the TRRC provided interim reparations to victims amounting to 13 million dalasi and the remaining 33 million was used for victims’ partial reparations by the TRRC, with the expectation that the National Reparations Commission finalising the reparations process.
We urge the government to stand against human rights violations and to promote the Rule of Law, to uphold the Never Again mantra.
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